Missing

There was only one place to go, definitely not home. I was going to go missing.

*

I felt like a writer with a story and the end; and nothing in between to write.

I tried to focus on what the Rubenesque doctor was telling me. She was like a shadow dancing so far away out of reach.

I was just beginning to live, I thought. How did this happen?

I was a junkie coming out of rehab. Meth had taken most of my enamel, and some other combination gave me heart palpitations. But rehab, thanks to dad’s money, put me in order.

Behavioural therapy, superintended by the beautiful Dr Liza, was the real deal. I loved visiting her, watching her as she counselled me, fantasising. Now I was cursing.

Dr Liza of my dreams ordered a slew of tests on me before she let me off the hook, with a recommendation to live in the society. The results were out, and Dr Liza was talking that talk again. You know the kind of talk they talk of positive living.

“Your CD4 count is not that bad,” she was saying. “You have the whole life ahead of you.”

No, I did not have any life. I had an end.

Dr Liza did not see that, she couldn’t.

*

I love missing. It was the only place no one would judge me; see me as a burden, just another walking dead.