A girl disappears from your life without a trace. You’re seventeen then, a vigorous young man. And she’s the first person you ever kissed. A wonderful, lovely girl you’re attracted to more than anyone else. And she said she likes you too. When the time comes, she said, she wants to be yours. And then that person—unannounced, without a word of good-bye, or anything resembling an explanation—leaves you. Disappears. Literally, like smoke vanishing.
What could have happened to her?
Had some urgent turn of events forced her to move away, to another town? (But whatever the situation, she should have been able to tell you.) Or was she walking down the street when something fell from the sky, striking her in the head, and as a result, she lost her memory? Or was she no longer alive (killed in a traffic accident; murdered by some random, passing attacker; or dead from some fast-acting, rare disease, or by suicide?). Or was she kidnapped and locked away somewhere? (But by whom? And for what purpose?) Or had she suddenly stopped liking you—hating to even see your face or even hear your name? (Had you said something wrong, or done something you shouldn’t have?) Or was there a tiny black hole on a street corner somewhere that secretly opened up and sucked her inside as she passed by, like a leaf sucked down a drain? Or, perhaps…in this world every possibility is quietly awaiting a person. Danger lurks around every corner. But you have no way of knowing what actually happened to her.
Can you possibly imagine how painful it is to suddenly have the one you love leave for no reason, how much it hurt your heart, how deeply it ripped you apart, how much you bled inside?
What hurt most of all was the feeling that the whole world had abandoned you. That you were now a person without a shred of value. A meaningless scrap of paper, or simply invisible. You hold your palm up, gazing at it until you can gradually see through to the other side—it’s no lie, it’s real.
You search for a reasonable, convincing explanation. You need that more than anything. But nobody has one. Nobody tells you where to go now. No one consoles you or encourages you. (It wouldn’t help even if they did.) You’re left utterly alone in a desolate land. Not a single tree or blade of grass to be seen. A strong wind is already blowing in one direction there—a wind that stings the skin like tiny needles. You’ve been mercilessly excluded from a world of warmth. Isolated. With thoughts that have no outlet, lying heavy, like a lump of lead, inside you.
There should be some word from her. With that in mind you wait, patiently. But maybe there’s nothing else you can do. But although you continue to wait, no word comes. The phone doesn’t ring, no thick envelopes arrive in the mail. No knocks at the door. Only silence, and nothingness. Silence and nothingness become your friends. Things you wish would not be your friends. But no others will stay with you. You cling to a thread of hope, of course you do. But in the face of the blunt instruments of silence and nothingness, the shadow of hope grows ever fainter.
And so I reached my eighteenth birthday, and then another year passed after I received that final letter. Time passed heavily, yet somehow briskly. A milestone would appear, only to fade away. And then another would come.
I couldn’t comprehend how I was supposed to be as a person. Why was I here, doing what I was doing? And does such a strong wind always blow like this? I asked myself this so many times.
An answer never came.