Review 2005Vaughan Simons

Yes, it's true. In 2005, I finally managed to achieve a personal goal. In 2005, I disappeared. Sort of.

It began, all too poetically, last New Year's Eve. Not being able to enter into the social whirl and increasing paranoia of trying to find myself with some people, somewhere, celebrating, I was at home in bed. Admittedly, I wasn't in the best frame of mind because, well, we all know that New Year's Eve is one of those dates when being alone hangs heavily over one's head, don't we? However, as I lay there and listened to fireworks going off and the sounds of drunken revelry in the hours around midnight, I began to ponder my lengthy obsession with disappearing. My dreams of leaving. Getting the hell out. Vanishing off the face of the Earth.

This isn't a new fascination. I've had it for years. Previously, I've planned where I would go in the world - a list that gets frequently added to and updated, with Newfoundland being my latest location of choice after watching the film The Shipping News. I've also thought about what I would hopefully do with my life when I got there - this usually involves taking on some dull "pays the wages" job that allows me time to indulge my passion for writing (yes, my plans really are that vague, dreamy and impractical). I've also carefully considered the wording of the few notes that I would leave for the people I cared about and I believe cared about me - typically, those notes have gradually turned from short messages into epic letters. Probably like this post, in fact.

While these thoughts already sound quite scarily detailed, this is far as they got before this year. Nothing more than idle daydreaming. But in 2005, I have to confess that I became more serious about it all. Rather more obsessive.

I spent the first half of this year secretly immersing myself in writings about disappearing, reading everything I could find. The internet, of course, is a superb resource for stories about people who successfully left everything behind and Simply Left (though one has to wonder why, if they did it so successfully, we're now able to read their words on the subject). Unfortunately, there does seem to be a concentration on vanishing without a trace because you've done something illegal or because of a bad credit history, neither of which apply to me (my credit card statements don't yet bear any comparison with the national debt of a small African state, thankfully). Yet I found the information and inspiration I needed - which, in truth, probably wasn't much, since disappearing for me wouldn't actually require extricating myself from a wide-ranging and complex network of people. Or to put it another way, the number of notes I would need to write has been declining in recent years. Such are the dubious benefits of keeping one's life small and self-contained, I guess.

Come the middle of the year, however, and I hadn't gone anywhere. Nor, if I'm honest with myself, was I going to go anywhere. Indeed, the fact that I'm writing this now indicates that 2005 has almost played itself out and I'm very much still here. So what stopped me from doing it? What stopped me from disappearing? Sadly, there was no blinding light of realisation about my life and my place in the grand scheme of things. Nothing like that. Just thoughts of the people who would be upset if I vanished, and the practical considerations about what I'd live on, where I'd go, what I'd do (despite all the daydreams mentioned above). Oh, and just not having the nerve. Cowardice. That came into it as well, of course.

But I still wanted to disappear, to excuse myself from the world, even if it was only for a brief period and only in my own limited sphere. (It's at this point that I can imagine people asking me: "Were you running away?" To which, of course, I'd answer "No, no. Absolutely not", whilst sounding distinctly unconvincing. You might like to pause at this point in order to imagine your own meaningful dialogue with me; I hope it's as interesting as the ones I've come up with.)

I'd like to say that all that happened next was meticulously planned, but it was more a case of opportunities presenting themselves. First, I moved home, and compared to how many people I had given my new address to on the last occasion I moved, almost three years ago, this time the list was much shorter. Even fewer people had my new home phone number. There was no housewarming, because my new flat was going to be my cocoon away from everything. I went to work, but I mostly kept myself to myself - an office relocation to a corner of the building through which few people ever pass assisted me in that. I stopped the long email conversations with people during my working hours, and turned off Instant Messaging. Whenever my mobile rang, I carefully checked the number and then invariably let it go to voicemail. The few social occasions became even fewer, and I invented reasons for missing them or didn't pursue organising them (and it's surprising how quickly a non-committal attitude can be the death of one's social scene - that's a useful lifestyle tip for free, by the way). I had almost achieved a state of glorious isolation.

There was only one other area where I was still too public for my liking, and that was in the small corner of the web that I had been updating for five years. I won't say that my Garboesque desire to be alone was the only reason that I stopped maintaining my weblog - there are others - but it certainly played a major part. As a result of all the navel-gazing internal dialogues I'd posted over the years about why the hell I continued to do something as exhibitionist as blogging, I had finally begun to identify the reason: it was to remind myself that I existed, that I was actually making a small though almost imperceptible mark on the world on a daily basis. Well, now I felt able to do without that crutch. I wanted to spend some time not existing, spend some time not being the person everyone expected me to be. That fitted in very conveniently with my need to vanish.

For the past few years, I had been quite an open book to people. I wanted to close that volume for a while; to be less obvious, less public. When I did talk, I wanted to do so in private. I wanted to disappear. Changing my name, severing my links with everything I know, leaving and drifting off to a corner of Newfoundland, Iceland, New Zealand or wherever - those epic dreams of leaving are off the agenda for the time being. In my own limited way, I've reached my vanishing point. Now I just have to work out how to find my way back - and even whether I want to make that return journey.

Vaughan Simons writes (or wrote?) Wherever You Are

For an introduction and list of contributors to Review 2005, follow this link.