Part of the beauty of New York City is the ability to be anonymous while surrounded by people. You can spend an entire afternoon outside and never interact with a single soul even though there’s a new face on every corner and unless you’re dating someone who lives in your apartment building, there’s a 97% chance that you can get away with pulling a Vanishing Act if necessary.

There are small Vanishing Acts like taking a guys number and never calling or giving a guy a fake phone number. There’s also the large scale Vanishing Act/backdoor break-up where instead of being forthright with a person, you ignore calls and fall off the face of the earth.

I can only remember pulling a vanishing act once. I met a guy online, had a three fantastic dates and at the end of our date, he mentioned how fun it would be to take a trip to California so he could meet my family. When I realized that I couldn’t imagine bringing this guy home, I decided to end things with him. But instead of having the “I’m not interested” conversation with him, I just ignored his calls for weeks until he presumably got the hint.

I think Adrian pulled a Vanishing Act on me.

The first week of his trip I was pretty obsessive; refreshing the emails on my iPhone constantly, waiting to see an email with his name on it. The second week I was worried; wondering if something had happened to him. But, by the third week, I was pretty numb to the whole thing. I knew there was no point in obsessing over something I couldn’t control.

You see, Adrian was so “gung-ho” about us, and so frustrated about leaving in the early stages of our relationship, that I left everything in his hands without thinking twice about it. I gave him my email address and although I knew his full name and where he worked, I just figured I’d get his information when he contacted me.

In the moment it was an assumption that I didn’t think twice about, but looking back I see that I made it pretty easy for Adrian to vanish either on accident or on purpose.

At first I was mad at myself for not getting all of his information, but as I thought more about it, I feel like if he was “the one” he’d have worked hard to stay in touch. During that first frantic week, I did leave him a voicemail that I figured he’d get when he landed back on US soil, it basically said “I hope you’re okay, here’s my phone number”.

Yesterday I called Adrian’s phone, just to see if he’d pick up… it was disconnected.

*sigh* On to the next one!