By the Time You Read This

I feel cold. Not force-myself-off-the-chair-and-grab-a-hoodie cold.

Numb.

With each inhale another vein, another artery freezes to stop the rush of my blood.

Numb.

I stare at the white wall in front of me—hard. So hard that my hand grips the pen tight enough to break the first layer of skin that protects my left hand.

Like the tinman before the oil, I bring the gel ink tip to the top of the page and begin:

–

By the time you read this, it will have been 3 years since you reported me missing. You will have experienced the stages of grief almost in their entirety. But now – right now in this moment – you are back at stage one: Shock.

As I am writing this letter, you are being awarded tenure at the University. I told you I was wretchedly ill. I told you that it was breaking my heart and absolutely ruining my life not being there with you. Every word that came out of my mouth was a lie.

You will have come home to a closet half empty. Your grandmother’s armoire is robbed of all my little things. My bedside table contains nothing but this letter that you will only find if you are throwing my table away. Congratulations. You’re moving on.

–

A thought paused me. I love that table. I pry my spine straight vertebra by vertebrae. I, a stick, swivel ninety degrees to the left and notice my beautiful piece of furniture. I fear the pain of missing this orphaned mahogany confidant more than I’ll miss Jackson. I stare at the antique trying to decide the perfect place to tape the letter. I settle on the very bottom so that he would have to see it when he inevitably hauls it off somewhere. Wherever.

I return to the future.

–

I’ve done my research, and if the facts are true, it will have been 2 years since you and your family accepted I’ve been kidnapped, raped, and murdered. That is the only explanation you and everyone else could live with after an entire year of tirelessly searching for me, or for my body. And in the three years prior to you finding this letter both our lives have changed completely.

You will have become an overnight sensation in social psychology. Specifically in domestic relationships and failed love affairs. You did it by publishing your book, right? The one I love. The one that’s about how to love broken people. The How To on how to love me. The one you almost left unfinished. I hired the publisher. You’re welcome.

I will have successfully changed my name, my address, my cell phone number, and everything about me that could be familiar to you. I am now a stranger. You would not know if we were sitting next to each other on the same airplane, or if I served you coffee at a booth in a diner.

You will spend countless nights at your mom’s. Crying into her shoulder, gasping at the air for answers. She will watch you turn into a child. She will watch you as your demons grow and drag you to the bar; slowly replacing her love with the comfort of a double Jameo neat.

From that point, it all stays the same. Me: a new woman. You: a drunk and a famous author.

I know I should apologize, but I can’t. Why should I? You got your dream and I got mine. We never made any plans. I made the plans and you followed me.

So, yeah. I am alive. I am doing fine, but you cannot and will not find me.

I love you forever.

Fuck. I know this is selfish. No, it’s beyond that. It is clinically psychotic, but I have to go. I have to leave and live the one dream I always knew I was capable of bringing to reality. If I can make his dream come true at the same time, it can’t really be that selfish.

And that is what I will always tell myself. I made two dreams come true. He gets his life on a barstool talking to people about the mystery of his love lost and how he wrote a book about her. I get to wake up every morning on the Gulf of Mexico laughing at the girl I used to be.