When I Vanished from My Own Life

When I Vanished from My Own LifeGenre: Poetic Essay / Personal / Mental HealthTheme: Dissociation, healing, rediscovery

It didn’t happen all at once.

Disappearing, I mean. It wasn’t a dramatic exit or a clear rupture, not something anyone else could name. No slammed doors. No goodbyes. No shouts or suitcase handles gripped in fists. It was quieter than that. More like fog curling in through the cracks of my mind, until I couldn’t see the outlines of myself anymore.

One morning, I woke up and realized I hadn’t really been here for weeks. Or maybe months. I had gone to work. I had answered texts. I had smiled when people spoke to me. But there was no me behind my eyes — only someone acting on autopilot. A ghost who wore my clothes and nodded in all the right places.

I ghosted myself.

I faded from my own days, leaving behind only a body with good intentions and blank expressions. It’s hard to say exactly when I left. Maybe it started when the joy drained from the things I used to love — books, music, mornings. Maybe when even silence started to feel loud. Maybe it was the loneliness. Or the exhaustion. Or the relentless pretending.

At some point, I stopped returning calls from my own heart.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t announce that I was slipping. I simply... wasn’t there. I answered emails. I paid bills. I smiled in photos. I was high-functioning and hollow, like a house with all the lights on but no one home.

The world didn't notice I was gone.

And maybe that’s what hurt the most.

People praised my strength, my consistency, my calm demeanor. They didn’t know I had vanished. They didn’t ask why my laugh didn’t echo anymore. They didn’t see that my “I’m fine” was a carefully rehearsed performance, an incantation to keep the questions at bay.

But inside, it was barren. Not painful — not in the way people understand pain. It was numb. Like floating underwater, eyes open, watching the world move above you while the sound is muffled and the light too far away.

I missed myself. Desperately.

And yet, I didn’t know how to come back.

Healing didn’t arrive with a grand gesture. No magical sunrise. No lightning bolt epiphany. Just one small moment: I looked at the reflection in the mirror and whispered, “I miss you.”

It was the first honest thing I’d said to myself in a long time.

After that, I started writing letters. To the version of me who used to sing in the shower. To the girl who stayed up late dreaming, who believed in the poetry of her own becoming. To the one who cried during sad movies and laughed with her whole face.

I didn’t know if those versions still existed. But I wrote anyway.

I walked more. I listened to birds even when my mind buzzed with static. I forced myself to cook again, even if it was just scrambled eggs. I told one friend, then another, that I was not okay. They didn’t know what to say, but they stayed. And that mattered.

I stopped punishing myself for disappearing. I stopped calling it failure. I began to understand that vanishing was not cowardice — it was survival. It was my mind’s way of saying, I cannot carry this weight unless I set something down.

Eventually, I found traces of myself in strange places. A forgotten playlist that made my chest ache with nostalgia. A childhood photograph where my grin was wild and unashamed. A poem I’d written years ago that felt like a map.

I followed the breadcrumbs back.

Not quickly. Not cleanly. There were days I got lost again. Days when the fog returned and all I could do was sit quietly in it. But I kept showing up. Kept whispering, I’m still here. Even when I can’t feel it.

Coming back to life is not loud. It’s not even linear. It’s small. It's breathing. It’s brushing your hair even when no one will see you. It’s saying, “I’m tired,” and letting that be enough. It’s letting yourself feel anything again, even if it’s grief.

Today, I still disappear sometimes. But I leave breadcrumbs. I tell someone. I write. I sing softly in the kitchen again.

I know now that I am not the fog. I am the one finding her way through it.

And that is enough.