It was sometime in May when I completely disappeared.
It began in late January, right around that time when everyone is getting sick and so burnt out that no one could be expected to notice that your right forearm is a little less opaque than it used to be.
I didn’t notice it at first, either. It didn’t seem to affect anything I did. My arm still felt as solid as it had always been—it just looked transparent. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, until other parts of me started disappearing too. Then I started thinking that there was something wrong with my head, because no one else could see that there was anything unusual about it, even when I tried to show them.
I started wearing the heaviest sweaters I could find because I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t weigh myself down, and it went on like that for a few months. I thought it might have been the result of chronic sleep deprivation. I kept telling myself I’d ask someone about it, but I guess I never got the chance.
It was around March when I started seeing and hearing things a tiny bit differently. I guess when parts of your body start returning to air and dust, you become more in-tune with the little things. Things like the shivers of blades of grass rubbing against each other and the whispers of clouds as they traveled overhead. I tried not to think about it, which wasn’t that difficult. There were a lot of other things to occupy my mind with, and eventually I just accepted it.
Then one night I looked up from my desk and everything had gone cotton-candy pink. It was just the chair I was sitting in, supported by a mass of clouds. Their giggling whispers floated around me and I still can’t explain it, but there was something about the dream space that was so pleasing to be in: the pale pink sky, happy clouds, and winking stars above me. Everything was so light and free that I stepped onto the clouds below without thinking and was surprised when they dissipated beneath me and dropped me into darkness.
I dismissed it as a stupid dream and didn’t think too much about it, until I found myself in the dream space the next night, and then the next. It became a daily occurrence. Being among those pink clouds, tissue-paper jellyfish floating around me, made me feel lighter than a dragonfly letting its shimmery wings carry it through the wind.
One day, I took a step onto the clouds and didn’t fall. That was when I knew I had completely disappeared.