Rae Mariz

First, look for a window of opportunity instead of a clearly marked exit. This will be your way out. Lift one leg over the edge, and then the other, and then you’re out into the night. It’s the same way the breeze gets in.
         You might be tempted to have a masquerade mask in your handbag. To place over your eyes in a mysterious gesture. You are not fooling anyone. But all gestures are made to be seen. So leave the mask.    And drop the handbag. And if you haven’t already, take off your shoes.
          Now, you run.
 
You may think you’re running in the darkness, but you are not. You are running toward the darkness. Here, there are street lamps still casting tiny diamonds in the asphalt. Crush them with your bare feet. Keep running. 
          Soon the muted sound of your feet slapping the pavement will increase to match the muffled heartbeats pounding in your chest. When the two rhythms fall into one, you will disappear, vanish, phase-shift, whatever you want to call it. You’re gone. 
          You can stop running now, though you may not want to.
 
Disappearing is easier than staying disappeared. Now you can move like shadows along the edges of everything. Raccoons and foxes and other night creatures will not notice you, so you can get close to them. But not as close to them as you want to be. 
          You may find that you have not really escaped at all. You are still you. Still here. And you still want what everybody wants. To touch, and feel a touch. This close to oblivion, you may want it more than ever now.
 
You must resist the urge to show yourself. To pile up sticks to point out the direction you’re heading in hopes that someone will follow. To tear heart-shaped holes into leaves and place them in the mailboxes for the ones you’re missing to one day find. If you don’t resist, if you leave some message to say I am here. Then you haven’t really gone. And soon enough, you will find yourself back in that room, in the center of that terrible crowd, regaling other people with stories about that time you had vanished without a trace. And they will not believe you, because they can see with their own eyes that you are right there. You can’t quite fool yourself.
 
Staying disappeared is harder than disappearing. You will always be wrestling with the need to reach out and tap a person on the shoulder. Your finger will tingle wanting to touch every stranger passing by, but the itch will fade as the fear grows that they will not feel you even if you try. You will not reach out. You will not touch them. And they will never see you. You are not a part of the world. 
          It’s hard, isn’t it?
 
Sometimes, I believe, it’s better to disappear in the daytime. The methods are different than darktime disappearance and results are far more difficult to maintain. But this experience doesn’t require leaving everything behind. To vanish in the light, you have to fill yourself up with everything until you are gone.
          It may seem counterintuitive, but direct sunlight provides the most ideal conditions for disappearance. The warmth that covers you, covers the stone beside you, covers every form of matter in the environment surrounding you. 
          In this light, it takes very little effort to melt, and spill over into everything. 
          To begin, wherever you are, find a tree with a low-hanging branch. If there are no trees—and there often aren’t in the places you want to disappear from—lie down on the grass. Close your eyes.
          Feel the blades of grass against your skin, each needle prick of the rasping tips, feel them all at once. Or the edges of a leaf against your cheek, if you found that improbable tree. Wait until the wind stills. And a single tooth of the leaf’s edge catches in a pore of your skin. Remember that the empty space between atoms means that nothing ever touches. But you can feel it. So you close the gap.
          With your eyes still shut, you refocus. In the same way you relax your vision when you stare emptily off into space, you will feel the places where the grass spikes and leaf tines touch your skin begin to blur. 
          The edges of the leaves disappear, and the edges of you disappear. 
          You blend into the background, fall deeper into the scenery, and simply become a part of the world. 
 
With this vanishing act, you are not the ghost of yourself.
          But a spirit.