Disappearing

Just

a minute or a day or a week or something ago, right? Ago. What does "ago" mean? I'm sitting here, enfolded in the closing day. The dustiness of it, but without chalkiness - just the greyness, the quiet. Like "taking tea". My windows are spotty and it might be drizzling outside, but it's too humid to open them. Stray chirpings and a child's wild scream keep me from feeling completely cozy or quiet.

So many people have gone away. On vacation, into new habits, into different work schedules and into that thing that happens. The disappearing. It's not always permanent. The ritual between summer and fall when some of the friends you have made shed away the lives that brought them to you. For some, it is a very good thing. There is an arc of healing the person is beginning that you're simply not on yet, or they're moving to a new city or something. Or, you have nothing in common but some part of the part of the abysmal part of the experience of your job and that is all you talk about so you wont talk to each other until September or never if you will never work together again.

Or something happens like someone realizes something about you, you thought they either knew or hoped they would never know, or worse, hoped wasn't true anymore, or just plain didn't know about yourself. Like you caught yourself making a stupid choice, or worse, a horrific, mostrously costly choice after you'd already made it -- it was too late. Well, they caught it. They thought they could handle it, but then, and how could you blame them, they just...disappeared. What was there to say?

They didn't want to know how you were because you were horrifyingly wrong. You hadn't protected them from getting badly hurt, either. You were...vacant of everything previously interesting. The one thing about you -- your seeming intelligence -- had proved useless. You were hollow. So, what was there to know.

And so the person just doesn't answer your calls anymore. Doesn't read your emails or send you any. He or She just disappears. And if you see that person, he or she will just run away. There will be no explanation because "you know." And you do. You failed in the most basic way a friend can fail and so he or she just walks away. It's like a code. And it always seems to happen in the summer. At least, to me.

I'm so sorry. To all those who have waved or are walking away.
I know it's feeble to say that I didn't want any of it to happen, but I didn't. Your disappearing has made me much more aware of my own failings and now, as I write this, perhaps, of the fact that I should stop seeking so much comfort and joy when I have brought so little and I have made so much disappear.