If I One Day Disappear by Francesca Leader

           ​Jeremy Segrott CC



​If I One Day Disappear

   Why don’t you just leave? you ask. How you look at me, my dear, well-intentioned friend who cares so much. What you imply, though you don’t mean to, is what he says outright: Stupid. Lazy. Worthless; if I suffer, I deserve to, because I’m choosing to be this way. But the “why” you demand is so old and deep and dark that if you could enter that Hadal region, you’d know: I was made for the trap that swallowed me. Because my mother chose life out of principle instead of generosity and readiness, then resented my father for falling in love with the child he’d asked her to discard, then took me away from him. Because I was loud and messy and difficult. Because her love was a bauble, a dangling lure made of ifs and maybes that I caught sometimes, but sometimes caught me, like a hook in my tender young cheek. Because I was wounded and rewounded by other underloved children who used me to distract from their own sorrow. Because, heart violated, I let my body be violated, too, just so the parts of me would match—an impulse like that feeling, having gazed overlong into the depths, that maybe you belong there. Because I thought no one would ever want to keep me, until he did. Until he showered me with hot gold need that seemed to burn off my impurities. Because his mind was sharp in places where mine was dull. Because he said he wanted to protect me, take care of me. He wanted my children. Of course, you’d say, That’s how it starts. And I’d say thanks so much for the insight, as well as the hindsight, neither of which could’ve registered in one jarred senseless by the opiate fallout of a lovebomb airstrike. Because he was careful, once the hurting began, to hurt me just enough, and at the right intervals, that I could bear it. That I’d forgive him. I’d never have stayed with a man who hit me, but one who insulted me? Demeaned me? Scorched the stunted sapling of my self-worth? To that, I said, yes, please! I thought such was the way of complex, hypersensitive men with the women who loved them—women strong enough to persevere; women good enough to heal them. Because he made sure I was five months pregnant, jobless and friendless, alone with him in a new town, before he really began to rend me, repeatedly, unforgivably, baring the false facets of his heart to other women, playing pieces of my identity like poker chips. Because I still tried, the way a death-row inmate tries, to make the best of things, knowing a fast-track to the abyss was the lone alternative. And while I thank you for your concern, I don’t need tears or anger that aren’t mine, or advice that, if followed, would lead not to heaven, but to a different hell. I need someone who’ll listen. Just listen, never judge. They used to shame women for leaving, you know—not so long ago. In our grandmothers’ day—our mothers’, even. When did staying become the shameful thing? The moment some of us grasped our true power, they declared it sufficient, though it wasn’t for most of us—only for a charmed or gifted few able not only to hold their power, but to wield it. Forgive me, my well-intentioned friend, if my arm went weak with doubt; if I dropped my weapon in the presence of what I, not yet wise, mistook for eternal devotion. Was it tough love you meant to give? As if I haven’t had that—almost nothing but that—for most of four decades. As if that weren’t the very toxin that deranged me thus, ever in flight between manic joy and anhedonic paralysis, on the run from a pain I can’t explain to you, a demon whose shape you can’t see. And if I one day disappear from your life, it’s not because I don’t care for you, or appreciate your efforts. It’s because instead of listening, you talked. You didn’t say I was stupid, lazy, or worthless, maybe. But you said all I needed to do was to make a plan, save some money, find a lawyer. And then you said, There are no victims, honey—only volunteers. You became the shinier side of the coin which, on the reverse, bore my tormenter’s face.


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Francesca Leader is a self-taught writer and artist with work published or forthcoming in the J Journal, The William and Mary Review, CutBank, Coffin Bell, and elsewhere. Find her on IG and Twitter @moon.in.a.bucket.

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