Good-bye

Today is July 17, 1974. Everything is ready to go. The thought of what comes tomorrow morning is making it hard to sleep. It’s nearly 2:00 in the morning and I have to be out of here by 6:30. I’m keeping positive, it’s just another sleepless night for me.

I’m meeting with a man, I can’t say his name or how I found him, but I’ve paid him a hefty amount of money in exchange for a new identity. These hours now are my last hours as Melba Cruz, tomorrow morning I’ll be a new person. No history, nothing but a mundane educational background and a few addresses in my record. I’m looking forward to the relief of not carrying any sort of past relationships or personal life happenings with this new name.

I’ve been saving my money up the past few months. I’ve barely gone out of the house, more than half my check has been saved and now that money sits in a yellow duffle bag beside my bed, waiting. Thats not where the $20,000 for my new life came from, but this money I have saved is enough to keep me on my feet until I’m able to find a steady job and get my life going.

Although this is a terrible thing to say, Dad’s passing has done good. He left me his house. I sold it. He died out of nowhere, a heart attack killed him. He was going to turn 59 at the start of next year. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, but I don’t feel so bad about selling the house. We weren’t that close anyways and it’s not the place I was raised, I don’t think I visited more than once or twice. It was more of a place he found as he became older and older and made his own. It was nice, a secluded 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom suburban home down in Florida.

Things haven’t been going the way I was planning, and not that I’ve done anything illegal or immoral that would require me disappearing, but the simple thought of having the remain myself, with the face the world attaches to my name, is unbearable. I don’t know what’s wrong with me or why I feel this way. Something inside me is yelling to leave. I’ve been hearing these screams for a year now, and after many trial and error attempts to fix my well-being, nothing has worked. This is my only option. I have no doubts.

As you can imagine, I have friends and family, I have a career path that seems promising. I’m sure it will be painful for them once I’m gone. I don’t have the guts to kill myself, that would just be absolutely giving up. I still want to live, but like I said, I cannot live one more moment as myself. I want no attachment to any of the things that have made me, me. Not anymore.

My time is ticking, the days go by like the hour hand of a clock slowly dragging on. I know what tomorrow will be and the day after that. I see my life 10 years from now, and nothing will change, I know I will still be me. I know I will still feel the same. I just can’t figure out what it is that I must change. I’ve tried things here and there but I’ve come to believe there is something much too fundamentally wrong with me to overcome these things. As a new person, something will always be there to occupy my mind and force me to move forward in life. There’s a lot I’ve learned being alive. The best thing for me right now is to take that knowledge and start a new life.

I will have to figure it all out, over again, yet this time I’ll be much wiser. There will be no strings attached to ever pull me back. Staying in this life and having to say goodbye is a task that my poor heart could never handle. Melba Cruz’s heart could never handle that.

Now, I’m not faking my death or making a scene, my plan is to disappear of the face of this planet and begin living life as a new woman. Simple as that.

I often journaled as a child and figured I would start up again. I bought this nice moleskin notebook, black leather and cream pages from the stationary store a few months ago. After tomorrow, I’ll begin using it. I wonder what the first sentence I write will be. I wonder if my thoughts will change with me. As a new person, I’m sure they’ll be many thoughts in my head but I’ve learned sometimes keeping your thoughts to yourself is the best. This notebook will be my first friend.