I had decided all I wanted was to die in a town where I wouldn’t be grieved.

As I crossed state lines, curled up in the back of a blue-green Chevrolet from the seventies, the foliage, at last, began to wane from dried, yellowish, and decayed. My surroundings were suddenly lush, dew-soaked, wistful, and resplendent.

It’s so peaceful to sit in the backseat and not have to be anything for a while, to watch leaves cast arborescent shadows over you and to believe you could be forgotten among the sounds of the engine whirring softly, like a sullen lullaby from the hazy voice of a lost family friend.

Fading my ephemeral consciousness toward the pine trees as they blurred past me, faster and faster, I felt an indescribable divinity bubble up within me, along with a resigned admiration for the whole of life: the plain, the vile, the alluring, the borderlines between bittersweet and saccharine. I adored them equally. I adored them as they passed through each other, all at this moment, seemingly just for me. I felt the strange serenity of an acquiescent return to a familiar dream.

I had tried to live a life in New York, a life of keys kept in heart-shaped porcelain, love letters written and signed in cursive, a life contingent on the guarantee that I would take up only the space I said I would, and no more. Even when I begged it to lie still, my soul would undulate. The transitory nature of my dreams led me to solipsistic desires, my ribcage ached and possessed me with the call to escape the lull of all that was known to me. My fatal flaw was this: an intrinsic proclivity for solitude, misanthropy, and avoidance. I was never more euphoric than when I was the person leaving. I could leave anything. I always had within me the capacity to forget and to disappear.

I had taken nothing with me, or more accurately, I had accidentally brought along three Marlboro originals (half-crumpled and neglected in my pocket). Once my hands grew pale and longed for shelter from the cold, I was met with the sensation of spilled tobacco hidden under the beds of my fingernails.

Why bring nothing? Did I grow so apathetic of all around me that I had no attachments, not one possession that meant something to me? It was less about the absence of enjoyment, and more so the enjoyment of absence. What brought me the most pleasant stoicism was the prospect of my absolute disappearance, a true disappearance, with no thread whatsoever to anything that came before.

I’d been lucky on the roadside of the Pacific Coast Highway, I was picked up by a mesmerizing thirty-something blonde heading the same way. If I were still tied to any hope of earthly pleasure, I would’ve spent the ride desperately rooted in desire, overtaken by the dream that she craved femininity in exchange for her own.

I was standing on the edge of the shore. I succumbed to the placid nothingness of the water as it enveloped me, it felt as good a resting place as any. I found comfort in the idea of being reclaimed by the sea. My body washed up on the white-sand beach days later, pallid, with tones of soft purple. The locals weren’t used to displays of tragedy, their coastal town was largely peaceful. They never knew me, although they treated me as if they had. They combed the sands for details missed and imagined what could’ve possibly happened to a girl as young as I was. Sedated and promptly pushed in? Afraid and left alone to face the unpredictable cruelty of the ocean?

They taped up flyers around town, begging for any information, ‘DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS GIRL?’ They posed the same question to all students at the high school, some said they might’ve seen me at cheer tryouts, or smoking in the bathroom during third period, though of course, they hadn’t, it was only their small-town desire to be in no way recalcitrant, to help the local authorities in any way they could, even by subconsciously fabricating memories.

Soon enough, I was no one. I didn’t have a name. I had a body, which they took possession of, though I had already gone from it. The population of the misty coastal town felt saddened (mostly at the reminder of their own ineluctable visceral wilting) although, they would soon return to more important things: breakfasts of honey glaze donuts and stacks of syrup-doused pancakes (with a pad of butter on top), conversations devoid of vagaries, gas-station runs (where a tank would last nearly a month), newspapers read over stale coffee (gone unnoticed due to the burnt taste permanently pervading their nicotine-craving mouths).

Why leave? Why leave if I had loved the overgrown pine trees, the scent of salty mist which accompanied the blissful breeze? It was exactly this loving that pulled me into the ebb of the unrelenting blue. I loved life, I loved living, I loved feeling the undeniable essence of the present brush up against me. How could I ever devote myself to making a living when I was so enamoured with life as it was? This was the issue, I could never participate, all I wanted was to feel, to observe, to let life crash over me, to be a conduit for all of its cruelty and all of its sensual, flavourful pleasantries.

I was standing on the edge of the shore. I felt the bracing current of the sea as it grabbed hold of me, I let it wrap around me like a sweet embrace. I felt life’s beauty and absurdity permeate me wholly, I felt incapable of seeing only the good or the bad. I let the tide pull me in as it wished, it never took me too far from the sands of solace. I came back, half an hour later, strangely rejuvenated and ripped away from any impulse to be permanently undertaken or swallowed. I roamed the beach in a strange clarity, unequivocally accepting my sudden resolution to remain. I walked far enough to find a pier, and on it, obscured in the cloudy rumblings of the oncoming rain, I saw the blue neon sign of a café (by day) that doubled as a diner (at night). I wandered over, soaking wet, dragging the unrelenting beauty of the waves along with me. Upon stepping inside, I had the vibrant sensation of entering another time. The soft melodic sha-la-la’s of Roy Orbison’s ‘Blue Angel’ rang throughout the Americana-esque establishment, which felt frozen in time, like the soft serve split between sophomore sweethearts in the corner booth. The air smelled of sugar fallout from a sickeningly sweet explosion. The locals smiled at me as if I were one too, as if I must’ve been (for who else would ever end up here?). I sat at the counter and offered the waitress my most angelic smile, met with the same in return. ‘Shelley’ took one look at me and spoke in a dulcet, honey-like tone, “You poor thing!” She swayed back with piping hot coffee in no time (on the house).

I am standing on the edge of the shore. I draw abstract calls for help in the doughy sand, I wonder how long they will last before the tide sweeps them up, too. I’m on the crepuscule of an irrevocable decision, cruelly incapable of committing to either/or.