𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐚 (𝐧.) 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐚 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞
I'm Mitch. I don't like giving my full name out to strangers. Not because of privacy reasons. I just hate the sound of it.
I was born in Florida and was raised here my whole life. The liveliness of it all is what makes me love this place. I had two loving parents, I made friends easily, I was involved in lots of clubs and school sports. My life seemed perfect. But nothing felt right. Everything I did felt like a lie. The life I lived every day seemed like a sort of mirage, cloudy, unreachable, something I couldn't decipher. If I had seemingly everything I could ever need, then what could be missing?
My mother encouraged me to find something that interested me. So, I learned to play the piano...then guitar...violin...flute... I took ballet lessons, joined a swim team, read seemingly every book I could find, learned to bake, I even learned French.
I excelled at everything I did, and my parents were proud of me considering my young age. I attempted almost everything, and it felt like a failed mission each time, moving on from one thing to the next with no outcome of finding what I longed for.
My father hauled me along with him to the hospital where he worked one day after I had given up attempting to do anything at all. He had told me that some of the older patients could use some company.
I could never have predicted the outcome of that day. I went to practically all of the patients I could. I listened as some of them recounted their memories, we laughed, and I shared some of the things I had learned from many of the activities I had learned to do. I even begged my father for a keyboard to bring with me so that I could play for them. I was there nearly every day. I got to know a lot of the people who worked there and I loved being able to help in any way I could.
For the first time in my life, I didn't feel lost.
I'll be graduating from high school in a month and have no idea where I'll go after that.
My dad told me I was destined for greatness, that I would "rescue humankind," as he put it. He said it a year ago, just before he vanished. It was an odd choice of words to say to your daughter before you decided to vanish off the face of the planet.
That day he vanished, my mother and I had considered everything. He could have been having an affair. Or have been stressed out at work and wanted some alone time. We came up with a lot of possibilities, but none of them seemed like something he'd do.
I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing him again, so I pushed it aside. I had convinced myself that his death wasn't an option. But that was back then, you start with so much hope.
The investigators spent months trying to trace him down, but it seemed like he was just plucked off the Earth, with no trace of him anywhere. My mom didn't take the news well. To cope she's been distracting herself with work. She tries to avoid talking about him, which doesn't do any good.
He's been missing for a year now. And, to put it simply....he's still alive.
He started sending the letters to me three months ago. I didn't know how to react, or what to think. Most of all I felt relieved, I knew he would be alive, but there was a part of me that was ultimately angry at him. I received his letters but I never wrote back. There wasn't a return address anyways.
He wrote about how he was fine, and everything would have an explanation later.
I became angrier at him with each one I received. I last received a letter from him about a month ago, and he hasn't written since. I felt strangely relieved, yet he was still my dad. I still loved and worried about him. But I was confused.
Who knows what there is to come.
