The Vanishing Act

My solitary DNA

I have always been a solitary person, but for a long time, I did not know its name. 

I knew it as an insatiable hunger without practice. I was a teenager, always sleeping, always tired, young, and lonely. I understood though, this nameless thing as a sleepless night, where, at the first signs of dawn I would slip out of my house and disappear down the road. A trace left in the clearing of fog, in the moisture of the grass--invisible and lifting, suddenly I was gone. 

It happened like this: August would fade into the world and the way animals can sometimes sense the weather, the sun would start setting on one of its days and my mind would not quiet. I knew it meant I would not be sleeping. I’d sit in my room, because in darkness I was too afraid to sit downstairs, and it took very little effort for me to stay awake. So I’d stay up. I’d watch the world transform. The windows would be open and the frogs would be loud and my house would settle, the furniture getting comfortable too now that no one was using them. Some hours felt like days but as soon as the sky began to lighten in hue the morning bottomed out seamlessly. Where once there was a feeling of having all the time in the world to get to the beach, suddenly there was a rush not to miss the sun. 

I’d take my bike off the porch and ride down the hill in my yard leaving a trail in the dew while only listening for cars, because there was no great need to be cautious in the way that normal life asks. This was not normal life at all. It was the beginning of an answer, the call back to something that had embedded itself in me. 

Night with all its lonesome was not what I wanted. Its prolonged solitude always seems unfulfilling. Darkness offers a veil we can mostly cover ourselves from. In the form of dreams or tucking away in its shadow where no one can see us on our own. Riding down the barren roads while the earth was beginning to reveal itself, the color indigo a fine film over everything, did not allow for my solitude to remain totally unseen by myself or the people around. Joggers were there, bikers, some early morning drivers. To have them see was a confirmation of something that is still impossible to describe. As if, paradoxically, being alone does not happen unless someone is bearing witness to its occurrence, and then therefore you are not alone at all.

What I wanted from those long nights has since grown less elusive. In some ways, it was a matter of having done it before that there was a sense of duty to continue on with it while the other half was a deep calling, an excitement for summer because it meant I got to answer this one thing. A desire I had under my skin, at the root of my chest, my spine, to spend an extended period alone with the world and all its wonders. Solitude in the most literal of the word. To see a world that is not awake and to see yourself, to feel safe in either regard. There was a time, those years, where that was difficult to do. It is not that way anymore.

Summer was the best of instructors for disappearing acts. You’re always in shorts and a t-shirt, skin out to the sun, somehow always losing any coverage you gain from sweat and swimming. The makeup doesn’t keep or even the sadness so easily washes off your face it’s hard to feel anything for too long. There is rarely any hiding. So little darkness to tuck into. This is perhaps why in summer that hunger was so present, because I was starving for it. Winter and its loneliness could never compare to the voluntary vanishing of summer. I liked that quiet world I saw so early in the morning. I liked that in disappearing one place you are also revealing yourself in another. At one point it was a consequence later a relief. All those hours up alone waiting for morning was a way of revealing desire. 

This yearly dive into my solitude was religious in cause. It was something to put faith into, something to practice. 

When I’d get to the beach I’d see there was no need to rush, even as the sky grew lighter, because the sun had yet to make its appearance. The whole world held barely any other color but blue, washed out by the sky and maybe that was on purpose. Maybe there weren’t enough people around to see color at all. That way you had to sit with yourself or else you had to really see what was going on. I’d sit on the sand and while the saturation began to rise in everything, I’d watch the town workers bring out the trash cans, or drag a rake-like thing across the sand to prepare for the day ahead. 

Beach Trip. August 2014

It was the first time, those mornings, where being alone was not lonely. Or perhaps in hindsight, it is the first time I noticed that richness. Where in opposition for my craving to connect with people, to be seen and loved, I went off and found it on my own. Felt a pull away from everything to a quiet corner of a beach where I was hidden from the road. 

The loneliness I’ve felt in my life I suspect is the very reason for my disappearance. Like an adaption to circumstance or perhaps both were planted in me from the time I was born and somehow are interwoven, climbing through the structures of my DNA announcing themselves on different occasions. Like a gene that’s capable of being turned on and off again. I simply find one of these things is almost always alert. I need both of them to function. I need, on some days, to be alone. Now I like to go swimming alone, eat alone, to see a movie alone. I take long walks in winter alone mostly because no one really wants to brace the cold and so I got used to it and now desire it once all the leaves have gone. I often also need to sleep alone, roll around in bed, and dream without the idea that someone there will save me if it’s a nightmare. I am stubbornly this way. 

I’m not here to say whether it’s good or bad and for now I mostly don’t care. I’m a person who requires from others the freedom to disappear. I’m okay with asking for it. Everyone knows I’ll be back again, everyone knows it’s not personal. Perhaps there will come a time I need to reel this habit in but I do not think it is now. 

Solitude is my greatest enemy and yet one of my finest comforts.

I think in part this luxury, to find peace in my own company, comes about because I have always had a good community. Something to long for, to return to after disappearing from. 

In any case, that return is always a soft arrival. The way your body manages to float back up to the surface without interference after you’ve dove underwater. It’s usually something as simple as a long-standing invitation, walking toward an apartment where I’m welcome, and knocking on the door unsuspectingly. The answer has been made and I feel the better for having gone when I had to. As if I know something or am alert to a finer quality of life and can pay better attention to the people there now that I know the vast space they take up. I have seen this lonesome life, taken a long look, and I could never mistake those absences for anything other than the people who they belong to. There’s a breaching, gently, whether that now be the end of a walk or the once consistent sound of cars passing the beach, people who are now up and alert. Life is happening, the color and heat returns, and suddenly you’re sitting on the beach with a satisfaction of someone who had just eaten a big meal. 

Most mornings it was not the cars though. It was a cat. It would turn up on the beach, desperate from having been out all night, to get a good pet from someone. So it would ask me for attention by rubbing its face into my legs, my hips, and I would answer its need. I would pet it for as long as I could as the water washed up and the calm morning sea turned rugged and murky with movement. The cat would never sit down it was restless, until some threshold was reached and it would walk off again. Setting down the beach alone. I couldn’t be angry or sad, I understood exactly why it was going. 

The Cat and Me August 2014

“The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.” John Steinbeck in a letter to his son.

The Deracination of Literature by Mary Gaitskill

What can I say he used an em dash. And sometimes it’s just those little things that make you love someone wholly wrong for you. The tiniest of details that reach deep to somewhere that longed to be touched. In college, a poetry professor told me, “you know punctuation is very personal.” And God it was. April 6th, 2023 12:10 AM

I’ve always found it very difficult to stand before a body of water that I’m not allowed or cannot go in. Whether that be because it’s too cold or because I don’t have my swim clothes. The latter more agonizing because it means I could have. March 25th, 2023 12:02 PM

These last few weeks I feel I have somewhat disappeared. Not on purpose really, but I keep forgetting to keep up with what I used to keep up. I don’t like checking my notifications or answering my messages. I don’t have much to say. I think in part it has to do with spring and that final push toward greenery which is often so inspiring that I have simply burned myself out. I’m on empty in regard to inspiration. I hope that once life returns to the trees in a more clear way I will find again I have things to say. In any case, I’m reading some good books now and I am resting up, and I’m writing my own book which leaves not a lot of time for me to remember that I have social media. So just know, if you are waiting around for me to return more fully, it is for the greater good that I stay away. At least for now. You’ll have something worth reading soon enough!

Here is April’s Mood board. The soft hues of morning and the bright yellows of day each working together. Happy spring, happy blooming, happy well deserved, and needed solitude before warmth is pulling us closer to one another, inviting us in!

The paid newsletter is a more narrative exploration of each month’s theme. They all come with their own little goodies, a look at what I’ve been mulling over that month etc etc. If that’s not your thing, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

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Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, to our solitary longings, a blue morning, and a cat to welcome you back

Love always,

Chloé