How to Dissappear Completely and Never be Found
I have been preoccupied as of late with two men. Or – more specifically, two husbands of friends, who have left their young families, one with a baby only weeks old, and have decided to pursue lives with new girlfriends. I see my friends juggling everything – the shock, the kids, the learning to live with less while the husbands go on luxury vacations with their new, younger girlfriends. They have moved on with their lives, pursued new relationships and are seen as different people. Their old life has disappeared completely and cannot be found without real effort.
That is the thing with today’s atomized world. People can just stop their old lives and start a new, without publicly feeling the consequences of what they did. This article: How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found
A Step-By-Step Guide To Leaving Your Old Life Behind is very much on subject. In seven easy steps you can leave your identity behind and start a new one. I also found this article about how Japanese people pay an agency to make them disappear to run away from debtors or old boyfriends: Running Away from your Problems at a Price. Wow.
So – here is my fantasy. To see one of these guys at a nice restaurant downtown (he frequents these now), stand up and state in an inappropriately loud voice all of the things he did, the mess that he left behind him and the pain he caused. People would look at him with mouths open, because he looks like a responsible-business-man-nice-guy. At the end, I would throw a glass of ice water towards into his lap, strictly for my own amusement. His old life would be animated in front of everyone – the old life would be found.
Obviously I am not going to do this. And… I struggle. I have never been married and I don’t have kids – so I can’t judge. I know that marriages work and don’t work… and no one is to blame. I also think that that people should be able to move on with their lives no matter what they have done in the past (certain criminals exempted). So – I think truly the best I can do is help my friends and their kids move forward with their lives as their husbands/dads have… and let the memories of their exes disappear completely with the rest of history in our atomized world.
SOMETIMES no one is to blame.
Sometimes someone is to blame.
Like when a husband leaves a young child and mother to pursue younger interests.
When my wife and I divorced I stuck around and took care of my child. Thats what happens when no one is to blame. It never ocurred to me to slink off on a luxury vacation.