Dear Rachel:

My understanding of the desire to disappear, disappearing being like a friend is the following: I spent most of my childhood and my life otherwise, not in the here-and-now. Not here. Not now. I was lost in a world of daydreaming. I was somewhere else, in a world of wishes coming true in big ways, all things possible, easy to materialize, accessible. Later in life I lost myself in books, reading about other people’s lives, imagining, again, being elsewhere, being someone else. What a relief it was to get away, or to disappear. I have very few memories of my childhood and life because so much of the time… I was elsewhere. I had very little awareness of what surrounded me, and very little awareness of my body. I was like a giant head floating in other lands, other worlds.

You asked: “if others out there understand what I mean by this?” Did I understand what you meant by disappearing?

anita