In the end it was the packing that put me off. Packing means leaving; and that just wasn’t enough. I needed to disappear.
There was just something so inelegant about the whole planning process – the secretly stashed cash – 10% of our income into an unnamed account, which clothes to take and where? Hating myself for hoping anyone would notice the suitcase by the door. It made me feel I need them, and of course I don’t. I need an exit.
I never was one for exits or entrances, I fell through years like a body through water; university, boyfriends, middle income job, marriage, mortgage, kids. The whole shebang.
Ticking. Off. The. Boxes. Until. They. All. Have. Ticks. In. And.
Time.
Time unrelenting, pushing forwards with the disquieting sense that one day, I would hit the ocean floor and nothing, no pension scheme or careful saving plan could protect me from what lurked down there. Something base and ancient and utterly inescapable. The final box on the list.
00:01 01/01/2000. The whole world looking at the sky and thinking how much better everything is now. And we won’t be cruel now, and we won’t be ill; a safe degree of separation between the then and the now. The city pulsing with hope – the crowd, packed tight ooze anticipation. Star shapes and fountains spray the sky with something like joy and upturned faces, glowing, red then gold in turn, see nothing but the spectacle of this momentous night.
Truly, I could not have planned a more fitting escape – leave nothing behind, take nothing with you, no baggage, no regrets, no memories. Just hold your breath and feel yourself change from the top down, the hot tap and the cold, trickling down and burning here, freezing there, augmenting yourself from head to toe. It was just such a perfect opportunity. Eyes searching for a loved one, lost in the crowd, pass across a face you don’t know, and continue searching.
And you slip away unnoticed. A changeling emerging as the winter sun rises.
All eyes upwards.
Wow, I love this.
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