TL;DR: I don’t hate people. I just prefer them from a safe distance — say, 500 miles or through a firmly locked bathroom door. This is the story of how vanishing became my therapy, and why I keep a folding chair in the airing cupboard, just in case.
Some people meditate. Some go for a jog. I vanish.
Not in a David Copperfield, “watch me float above the Thames” sort of way — more of a pensioner’s disappearing act: slippers on, phone off, curtains drawn tighter than an emotionally repressed Victorian, and the telly on just loud enough to drown out the sound of social expectations.
Self-isolation?
Darling, I invented it. Before it became trendy in pandemics and wellness retreats, I was already decades ahead, perfecting the fine art of Not Answering The Door. Honestly, if disappearing were an Olympic sport, I’d have more gold than Mr. T’s necklace collection.
And I don’t vanish because I hate people. Not entirely. I actually enjoy company – in the same way I enjoy jazz: once a month, for no longer than 20 minutes, and only if I’m allowed to leave early.
No, I disappear because life gets loud. Emotionally, mentally, occasionally physically when that bloke with the leaf blower starts up at 6:47 a.m. It’s as though the world has developed ADHD and wants to share it with me via group chat, phone calls, unexpected visits, and those horrifying two-word texts from my children: “Quick call?”
So I retreat.
Not far. I don’t need a cabin in the woods or a Himalayan cave. Just give me my reading chair, a lukewarm cup of tea, and the sweet certainty that nobody will ask me what I’m “planning to do with my day.”
That, my friend, is luxury.
When I disappear, I enter what I like to call Stealth Retirement Mode — where I roam freely about the house like a wise, cranky ghost. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I nap. Sometimes I sit on the toilet for 40 minutes pretending to poop just so no one interrupts me.
I don’t seek validation. I seek silence. And biscuits.
The joy of disappearing?
No one asks you to join a WhatsApp group, nobody assumes you’ll help move a sofa, and best of all, you don’t have to make small talk about the weather unless it’s really doing something special, like snowing in July or catching fire.
I call it emotional noise-cancelling. Others call it being antisocial. Tomato, tomato.
But here’s the twist: as much as I love disappearing — as much as I have trained myself to avoid humanity like it’s carrying a clipboard and asking for donations — there’s still a little part of me that hopes someone notices.
Not in a “where did Grandad wander off to this time?” kind of way. More in a “I see you, even when you’re hiding in the airing cupboard again” sort of way.
Because sometimes, it’s not about wanting to be alone. It’s about needing to be missed. To be found. To be understood — in that deep, gentle way only another old soul could manage.
To be sought out, even if you’re currently wrapped in a dressing gown with biscuit crumbs in your chest hair.
“Sometimes you think you want to disappear,” I once read, “but all you really want is to be found.”
Which is beautiful, poetic… and, frankly, impractical if you’ve hidden under the stairs with your phone on airplane mode.
But still — accurate.
So yes, I disappear. A lot. But I always leave the metaphorical kettle on. Because while solitude is glorious, connection — the real, quiet kind, the “no need to explain yourself” kind — is a warm mug of something that tastes like belonging.
And occasionally, even an old grey thinker wants a sip.
If you’ve ever disappeared into your shed, your book, your bathrobe, or your own mind — I see you. But don’t worry, I won’t make eye contact or start a conversation. That would defeat the whole point, wouldn’t it?
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Because we’re all vanishing a little — might as well do it together, quietly, with biscuits.