How Long it Takes to Disappear: Part 2

A story of losing (and finding) myself...continued

Dear Readers,

I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of this series! If you haven’t read it yet, go back and read it before continuing to Part 2 (below).

Most importantly, thank you for being here.

-Michelle

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The late May drive from Denver to Moab felt more parched than usual because we’d spent most of spring in quarantine. When we pulled off 1-70 to switch drivers and stretch our legs in the sudden, fry-an-egg-on-it hot, my sister, the artist, pulled a jasper bracelet from her backpack and handed it to me. 

To borrow. 

Now, the gold and violet stones cool my wrist, soothing the panic that’s settled in my chest.

I wonder if I will die out here. Will it still be on my arm by the time they find my body? Or will they find it on a rock or under a tree, the rest of me gone for good? 

Maybe, I think, this was the right path all along and they’re the ones who took the wrong turn. This is a small way I distract myself. Regardless of which path is the right path, I cannot deny that it was me who made the mistake by leaving.

At least I’m not the real kind of lost. I don’t have to shelter in the shade and conserve my water and hope for search and rescue to find me before nightfall. I still have options, but only two.

I can stay in the same place and wait for them, which has already been fruitless, but feels safe.

Or, I can take a chance and walk back the way I came. Maybe there’s a fork in the path, a well-defined route they’re already on. I can look for someone, anyone, ask if they’ve seen them.

But this is the largest place I’ve ever been. What if I take the wrong fork? What if I don’t see anyone?

I ready myself, mentally, for the latter choice.

The one that bears the risk of getting the real kind of lost.

***

People get lost in national parks all the time. The number of people who go missing for good is unclear because the park service doesn’t keep a running count, and it would still seem tiny compared to the amount of people missing in the country as a whole.

Many of the permanent disappearances are unexplained. Bodies appear without shoes or clothes miles from where they were last seen; other times in obvious places that were repeatedly searched. They also can tumble from ledges, fall into geysers, freeze in the snow. Their shoes can turn up without a body, or appear with a foot still inside. 

Then, there are the murdered ones — people who disappeared from cities and towns but whose bodies were stashed in desert canyons or alpine lakes.

Sometimes, long after the search has been called off, the only trace of a person rests in the memory of those who loved them. This leaves the families of those lost to the ether with one answer: that there is no answer. 

Still, I believe a person walks into the wilderness for a reason. I’m not so concerned with how many people vanished or what ultimately became of them. Instead, I want to know why they went at all. 

Perhaps they wanted to find a home within themselves. 

Perhaps they knew that this is something you do alone.

***

The first summer I have nowhere to live, I stay on my best friend’s farm, which is a mile from the house I grew up in. It’s the same house my mom and I lived in my senior year of high school, the one with little furniture or heat, the one with the foreclosure sign tacked into the frozen ground outside. 

The shame of it clings to me like cellophane. The tree in the front yard, the one I used to read under on perfect summer days, has been chopped down. A car I don’t recognize is parked in the driveway. Each time I pass I can’t decide if it hurts more to look, or look away. I don’t know anyone who knows what this is like. 

There was a time when humans existed only in the realm of the wild, when we slept in caves and dined in meadows and worked in the forest. I want to go back to the time when we belonged inside the whole world, but this is not how people think, not anymore.

For months, I share a bed with my friend and my clothes are in a suitcase, but I don't consider this a problem until I meet up with an ex boyfriend I'm sort of seeing again. I wear the most beautiful thrift store dress I own, a red button-down with white polka dots.

We’re sitting on the grassy hill that slopes down from the old brick middle school and he says to me, “but you don’t even have a house.”

It’s something everyone already knows without the words needing to be spoken. 

I want to say: The reason I don’t have a house is because I’ve lost mine; or rather, it’s been lost to me.

I want to say: It isn’t my fault.

Instead, I leave. 

***

What this all has made me realize is that I’m not expected to be somewhere when I’m not at school.

Opportunity dangles in front of me like a lure I gulp impatiently.

Since I can go anywhere, I decide on far away.

***

(…to be continued & completed next, in Part 3)