When Coleen, her boyfriend Ryan, & I went camping at a music festival in New Hampshire in June, throughout the weekend it rained heavily. They shared a tent, and I had my own. We camped near two hundred other tents and campers. After a long day of jamming, psychedelics, and eating mac and cheese in the rain, we decided not to stay up for the silent disco at our base camp and just hit the sack. However the low temperatures, and misting rain seeping into my Amazon tent made it hard to nod off. Not to mention many tents around us were becoming rowdy; doing whipits & playing drinking games throughout the night. I was restless, anxious, and if I was being honest with myself, on the verge of a breakdown. I wanted to believe I could fend for myself, thrive on my own. As long as I could be in a space to connect with the earth. I was lost somehow in my desire for nothing. I didn't want to bother Coleen with my pain because I was hoping for her sake she was able to fall asleep. And I vaguely overheard her & Ryan having sex at some point, and was angered by my jealousy; I desperately wanted to have a breakdown in someone's arms.

At some point throughout the night I decided to grab my airpods & listen to music to try and fall asleep. I usually have over two-hundred songs downloaded at all times for airplane travels. But somehow they had all un-downloaded, and since we were in rural New Hampshire, I had barely any phone reception to download anything new. My only option was to listen to my two books on Audible. One was Into The Wild, but I had just gotten to the point in the book where Chris is describing in detail how to hunt moose, so I didn't think that would be particularly relaxing. The other book was Between by Jessica Warman; a book I got with a free download coupon that came up in an ad when I was scrolling through instagram a few weeks ago. I had never heard of the book or the author, but was enticed by the ad & its description. I shivered underneath my Pottery Barn Teen fox-fur sleeping bag I got in the ninth grade. The wet ends of my hair laid on my breasts frigidly. I looked through my nearly translucent tent to marvel at the navy sky; mist covering the stars I wanted to capture. Slowly, I drifted off into an unfulfilling slumber listening to these words

I wanted to vanish so completely, that even I would not remember me. No feelings. No memories. Just the freedom of oblivion. I realized now that I wanted to disappear. To get so lost that nobody ever found me. To go so far away that I'd never be able to make my way home again. But I have no idea why...I couldn't understand the difference between disappearance and death. Both seemed the same to me.