A Fleeting Escape

I know two people, Meryl and Seth, who suffers from a common illness. I would like to refer it to as illness because the hostile characteristics exhibited by these two folks I had known for a long time appears to be senile and self-impairing. Bizarre and mystifying to put it in correct terms.

While Seth was a friend of mine since high school, I only came to be in right communication with him when both of us were completing our graduation. Ever since he connected with me through Facebook, after all these years, we were like a regular visit to each other place. I even introduced him to Taichi whom he already knew from one of his Maths classes. Things were looking pretty well. The three of us would be making plans for our future business ventures, visiting every prospect we found lucrative, every individual who could help us illustrate some faith in our start-up. It appeared that the three of us could finally make some major breakthrough into the highly aggressive market in our city. Obviously the idea was naïve, but we knew that what did exist was some hope. We were optimistic about our small approach. Seth was already into a successful paint business, gratefully inherited through his family. Taichi was deterministic and was good with contacts and networking. I was doing my bit on technical fronts and advisory. All was good till one day things went outlandish with Seth. He made sure to seize all contacts from me and Taichi and even made his family into believing to not to attend any phone calls or reply to any texts from the two of us. All this started when our semester exams began. The last time I met Taichi he convinced me to talk to Seth for one last time just for old time sake. He was hoping to unearth the core explanation for this uncanny behaviour of Seth although I was against the idea whole time. As expected the last attempt to make any contacts proved to be futile. He did however pick up the phone, promising to call back but the call never came. We knew that moment what he need to do and so we did exactly what seems to be necessary. Seth was forgotten and no one ever mentioned about him anymore. It was evident from his acts and his lies that he made us to confront to that he was finding the company of those people more satisfying and yielding those who once devised to his very soul.

Meryl came to my life when the chips went down for me. She stood beside me, clinging to her faith in me when I had almost lost myself and I couldn’t foresee a certain future to my academics. I would be calling her the last person on earth who walked up to me when everyone else I considered to be a friend exhibited their true colours and demonstrated the true fabric which shrouded them. She helped me out through every aspects of my mundane existence: from my dilapidated academic records to serving as my personal psychiatrist as well (a trait she inherited from her mother). She liked me and would often tell me that she could see more than just a failed man in me. She would tell me that my strengths and potentials were capable enough to catapult me into a distinct future full of grand opportunities it was just that I never knew. She liked me and so did I was beginning to fall for her. She was the kind of person who could see the insignificant and trifling speck of light even in the darkest of dark corners. She made a hell of a seductive beauty. Not that you get fascinated by the looks but the one that who appreciate and one you that gets you attracted to their intellect. Things were wonderful between us provided with some complications but kind of which could have easily worked out. Until Meryl went a step ahead and started taking control of my personal life. She literally started doubting every single person I knew and was against any idea of mine to forget all the wrongs that these people did to me and still move on with them. She wanted to be vengeful but forgetful as well. She wanted me to retaliate to them but wanted me still do nothing. I knew I couldn’t live like that. I tried explaining her but to no avail. And no matter how much, her intentions seem to be in my favour, they were in fact proving to be detrimental for me. I finally had to let her go, in the end to the point where our ideas and thoughts began to clash regarding the basic survival skills and to secure a socially acceptable life. And since that day I never had any further contact with her.

 Meryl and Seth now appear to be reminiscence of a past. They are nowhere to be spotted. It looks like they have just somehow disappeared from the entire planet somehow. What appears to me is that for Meryl and Seth the idea to disappear is gradual. And while it might be less acknowledging in case of Seth, Meryl made my nerves to put a serious thought about her disappearance. The whole idea to disappear may start with a basic impulse, a desire to disconnect. For many people, it is a fleeting escape. It could mean escaping from the arms of technological progression or retreating under a bunker. Days, months, years can pass. They appear to have somehow slipped through the cracks. And despite the presence of telecom technology and CCTV cameras which makes most of us feel like we are been monitored, it has become easier for these people to live alone any avoid any human contact altogether.

So some people don’t want to be found or to be reached. Masked areas serve to diminish the agitation with few areas of pure colours balancing the dearth of fervour in their lives. I couldn’t figure it out that why would the whole idea of making such a dramatic disappearance grant to these people. And why anyone wants to let go of all that you knew and make a new start. They believe they could start afresh, leaving behind all recollections of their past life without even realising that somewhere the reminders of the life they are trying to escape would still exists as some fragments. And somehow even the strongest of affection and cherished memories becomes the most haunting nightmares for them.