We Disappear Book

Dear stranger,

You don't know me. I don't know where else to write about this. I used to read a lot of books. Some I didn't think that much about, or they were just okay and I would move on to the next one. If I was lucky I would have some place else to go in my head and I could take some long walk to one of the usual spots and I wouldn't notice that they were just the usual places. The words would stay all together and no one would ever know. I try to capture some of that in writing on goodreads and I don't know that I have ever succeeded. It's hard to wear your heart under your shoe. I have been thinking about sending my heartfelt thank you letter to Scott Heim for writing this book that came along at exactly the perfect time. I have never done that. How often does that happen? Never enough. I don't know yet if I'm going to send it. On the off chance that someone will possibly care about this, even though I don't know you, I will write about We Disappear here, even though I don't feel like I could write myself out of a minefield right now. I don't think I want to do the usual thing this time, that's all. Anything has to be better than doing nothing.

They don't know you. They wear those blank name labels that you can fill in with your own name. Hospital visitor. The permanent marker sharpies over decades of false alarms and living every day as if it was your last to make up for all of the shit you never had the guts to say. Impersonator I'm writing a book about taken kids identifier. Official and voyeuristic. Taking a prison job to stand outside the gates of what's the worst that could happen. I'm here for the day to walk around in your shoes. That could have been you or me. Hi, I'm your mother. I'm trying to be someone else's mother. Before it is too late this is what happened to me. Hints, changing stories and recurring facts that could be the axis to keep the moon in halves spinning around the earth. Sons, the missing link, checked in daughter. I don't know if this is going to mean anything to anyone else. My thesaurus rex gives out synonyms for everyone's names. Scott the son could be Otis the young man who is really Allen who lets Donna think he could be her connection to Warren who is the only other person who could understand what happened to them when they were children. Names of what could be the only chance to ever understand. What are those called? Family?

Have you ever felt like it would be too late to get the answers to the secrets of your own and your families past? Donna has always felt like she was taken as a little girl. I don't know you so I feel at a loss how to describe this other than to say it is so much better than it sounds. I feel some urgency to get this right. Scott the crystal meth addict who depends on this loss of reality. I hope the worst isn't going to happen fate accomplice. Donna is his mother and she's been almost dying of cancer for so long that no one believes her when it is really happening. No one has believed her stories of the stables, the cherry mash chocolate bars and coloring books, basements, hidden and kept, the little boy Warren and feeling as if the old couple who took them might have loved them more than she had ever known love. Scott and Donna would drive around and ask questions about missing kids. Names on posters and on milk cartons. Photographs and details and parts of the puzzle. They don't know them. Could they feel as if they could? Is there a link? Did Scott know his mother as he thought he did when she's been keeping these secrets for so long? And what can he be left with when she is gone? I don't know about you but one of the things I have had to face is misleading stories from different people about things that happened. I cannot trust my own memory for not being what someone else told me. Do you even know your own family? Scott Heim is so special to me for writing about this the way that he did.

I had never read a Scott Heim novel before this one although I had meant to for years. Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite films. I couldn't stop watching it that weekend I had rented it those years ago. It hurt to have to return it. I wanted to thank the man who had written this story, also about being taken and how to move on when the purest love you ever felt you had could be totally false and never really for you. How do you live? Heim got things right that I don't think I've ever known of anyone else coming close to understanding. Several of my goodreads friends have been talking about the film and the book lately. It reminded me that I still had to read Scott Heim. My goodreads friend Emilie gave We Disappear five stars and it is on her favorites shelf (I have to admit she's more than kind of my goodreads hero for this. Not just for this). I don't know if Mysterious Skin the book is as perfect as the film (my goodreads friend Andy says that it isn't quite). We Disappear is, in my eyes, perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. If Heim had to go on a search to do this I hope he feels it is worth it. Does it mean anything when you touch another person and they will never know they did it?

Would that I knew how to thank Scott Heim for writing this mother and son relationship that means so much to me. I believe in it. It almost feels possible to be able to live with the burden of not really knowing people and that the courage to peak into that bone yard is a lot braver than I'm willing to give credit for. It never felt like enough.

We Disappear was my first beach read of 2012. That's my favorite place to read. It's close enough to some other world. I didn't care that anyone else was there and could dance to my ipod and react naturally. It is too hard to forget about oneself. Do you ever feel that? I was feeling my usual pretty damned bad and feeling worse than usual that this passes for normal. I looked up at the sky and there was an enormous black cloud only over my head. I forgot you don't know me. I'm Mariel and this time it was not a metaphorical one only. I was like this when you met me!

What do you think? Should I send the letter?

Love,
Mariel