Maybe I Could Fake My Own Death
By Melanie Dale
@melanierdale
I keep fantasizing about faking my own death.
After—how many months of lockdown? I’ve lost count—this seems almost reasonable. Surely I’m not alone in this sentiment. Were we ever truly meant to spend this much quality time with our loved ones? This much? All the time? With teenagers and a husband who works from home?
My husband is a daggone saint. I see it in his eyes sometimes. He’s looking at me, and he’s trying not to laugh and trying not to kill me, and it comes out in this frozen deerlike stance. I am the headlights. I am his demise. But he’s afraid to move because what if I’m attracted to motion, like a T-Rex, like a Headlight T-Rex that will paralyze him with my high beams then rip him to shreds?
I’m not a T-Rex. I have very long arms.
But seriously, if I faked my own death, where would I go? I’d change my name and disappear to a yurt on a mountain out west.
I hate nature. This is a bad plan.
I’d steal aboard a ship and sail to Europe and get lost in the Carpathian Mountains and commune with the spirit of Dracula.
This is a great plan.
But I hate logistics and faking my own death feels like a lot of logistics. Could I hire an assistant to handle the details of faking my own death? How much would I pay her? What’s the hourly rate on creating a new identity for someone who wants to start over? I could take out an ad on Craigslist, although then I’d be worried someone would show up and kill me for realsies, and I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of commitment. I’m looking for more of a pseudo death. Death lite, without any of the permanence.
I consider actually just dying, but that feels extreme. Unlike fake-dying, which feels perfectly reasonable after the year we’ve had. I mean, what mother hasn’t considered this? I’m within normal limits of sanity, I’m sure of it. I’m sure of it.
Don’t worry about Alex and the kids. They’re better off without me. I’m very difficult to live with. This morning I threatened to melt down my kid’s iPhone into a bracelet if she didn’t pass her stupid quasi-school hybrid classes. I’m no help with geometry homework. I got rid of three trash bags full of clothes because my kid refused to organize them.
And see, if I fake my own death, then they can move on with their lives. Alex could get a new wife who looooovvvves homemaking. She’d never get pissy about unloading the dishwasher three times in one day. She’d never lament her career circling the toilet because of the pandemic. She’d love making up games to play with the kid and staying up late to talk to the teens and she’d probably even fold laundry. Good for them. They deserve her. Real Proverbs 31 stuff.
This year is not going well for the moms.
I think about faking my death and then I think about how it feels like I’m faking it in general. Nothing feels real anymore, like the world has lost its tangibleness. This is not a word. I’m aware.
Tangibility. Better.
I’m faking my writing and faking my relationships. I’m faking smiles and faking happiness and faking positivity. I’m more numb than anything.
Droid Melanie is roboting through life just trying to press the right boxes to keep the spaceship in orbit so it doesn’t crash into the sun or get sucked into a black hole. Although black holes are where you can fast forward through time. I’ve seen Interstellar. I know how it works. This may be our best bet for getting out of 2020, because I’m beginning to wonder if 2020 is going to let us out of its Charybdis whirlpool. Yes, Karen, I’m aware I just combined sci-fi and mythology. It’s 2020. We have to throw everything we have at it. The black hole may be our only hope.
We may be putting too much pressure on January 1, 2021.
“What if it still sucks?” she whispers into the void.
We still have a bunch of months, some may say an indefinite number of months, and I’m just faking my way through, because the hardest part of hardship is that you can’t skip it. The only way out is through. We have to go through the pandemic and through the loss and through the grief and through the all of it.
Or find a black hole. Or fake our own deaths.
Recently I watched a funny dark comedy about a mom who fakes her own death for the insurance money. I wouldn’t do it for that. I’d just do it for a change of scenery and chance to live my life without the constant commentary of my loved ones. Can you imagine? No one to second guess your dinner choices. Shut up. Hotdog salad is a thing, guys.
My sixteen-year-old just hugged me. Never mind. I’m staying forever. Scenery means nothing to me. And anyway, by writing this all down, I’m destroying any hope I had of getting away with it. Who am I kidding? They’d probably find me.
“Mom, what’s for dinner?” my kid asks for the fourteenth time.
“Let’s go figure that out,” I say, climbing back out of the dank basement and into the kitchen once more.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.