Gone

Daisy

If someone would have told me they lived for sixteen whole years with their father and then he up and just left one day and they had no idea something like that was coming, I would have called them crazy.

It's funny, though, the things that seem crazy until they become your own.

The day we got back from Granny’s was the day the timer was set. I just hadn’t known it yet. Somewhere in Carson’s broken-hearted, beer-adled brain, he had decided that even living in the same state as his mother was almost as bad as living in the same house. He apparently took his time about it though, seeing that he didn’t just up and leave the next day. He waited a whole week.

I like to think maybe it was because he was struggling with himself over the decision. Maybe he didn’t really want to leave me, and the guilt was getting at him, off and on.

Or maybe he was just a stickler for planning.

Regardless, my life went on and that was part of the problem. I spent too much time dancing, not eating, sometimes hitting the “fat” of my legs with the back of my hairbrush, attempting to punish them into thinness. If I had the sight I have now, I’d know how garishly thin I was, but I also know it wouldn’t have mattered.

I didn’t eat because deep down, I wanted to die.

"Hey, there watch it, tubby!" Carson would say and laugh because what else was he supposed to say to me? He'd get all cross when I ignored him, so I developed a smirk that made me feel as grim as I probably looked.

I go back a lot. I think about the night before he left, what that must have been like, but I can't really recall it. I don't think I had dance because I remember the cold warmth of my room, a lopsided balance between wanting to be there and not wanting to be anywhere.

But it didn't matter. In the morning, he was gone. He left my mother's postcard on the kitchen table and a note that said he was going to find her. He said he'd send money for gas and food (he had paid off the house by then), and I almost wanted to believe him. Like he would go find her and they'd be together and finally be happy.

And that was part of the problem too. That I didn't factor me into any part of their equation.