The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Friends

In my life, I've had people that I considered friends. They were people I went out with, to the movies, to their house, to restaurants. In one case, it was a coworker who helped me go shopping for grownup clothes back when I first started my job. She also went to the movies with me a fair amount, and occasionally lunch. In another case, in college, she invited me over to her house and made pizza together (that was fun, but also weird because she didn't have allergies so she didn't run her furnace fan all the time to clean the air, which meant her house was oddly silent). We traded books to read and had lots of talks.

You get the idea, right? I mean, it certainly looked like friendship. They willingly spent time in my company, just with me, and did so repeatedly.

Yet I must have been missing something. Because each of these people just vanished out of my life one day.

The co-worker took medical leave from work and never came back. Never contacted me. Didn't make a single attempt to maintain what I thought was a pretty good friendship. I didn't have her email or phone number, and it was over a year before she got officially let go, and I'd just kept hoping she'd be back soon.

The college friend vanished even more abruptly. Her email address went dead ("undeliverable"); her car, a very distinct bright yellow 1950s type convertible, was no longer around (and I used to see it a lot, just on the road, randomly, as we went to the same places to shop, albeit at different times). Her phone number just rang and rang.

I think perhaps something serious happened to them. Maybe something dreadful. Kidnapped, or mental breakdown so severe she couldn't remember her friends from before.

And then I think they just didn't like me. That they took the opportunities they were given (leaving work; maybe moving somewhere else) to cut all ties with me, instead of telling me straight up that they didn't want me hanging around them any more.

I can be a very clingy friend. I try not to be, but then I'm afraid I come off as distant and uncaring. I don't seem to be able to find balance in many things in my life, and friendship is definitely one of those unbalanced sort of things.

And sometimes, when I haven't had enough sleep and I'm truly getting paranoid, I wonder if the college friend even ever existed. (I know the coworker did. I've mentioned her name since she left and had people know who I was talking about. And yes, I did it to make sure she, at least, was real.) But I don't know anybody else who knew my college friend.

I don't even remember her name now.

Isn't that a creepy thought? That I could have made up a person and believed so truly in what I made up that I don't even know if she's real or not? I probably should not have watched that movie, A Beautiful Mind, or I wouldn't know that sort of thing was possible for the human brain to do to itself.

I wish I knew if other people had friends just vanish. No note, no good bye, no "I got a job in California we'll keep in touch" and then don't (the keep in touch part).