When I get hungry, I pull over to a truck stop and wander the aisle looking for something healthy to eat. Stale donuts and old candy should be appetizing but for some reason they’re not.

I grab a water and get back in the car.

What am I looking for? I don’t know.

My life lies ahead of me but I don’t know where it’s going to take me. I can do anything and yet I feel like doing nothing.

I continue up the Pacific Coast Highway, watching the waves crash against themselves down the hills below. Every few miles there’s a turnaround and people pull over and take pictures.

A small collection of shops congregates around the bend. I don’t know exactly where I am except that it’s somewhere in central California. The shops are small, more like shacks and I stop into one to buy some fruit and a cup of juice.

I walk down to the sand and drink my juice with my feet buried deep under the cold coarse sand. The wind coming off the ocean sends shivers through me and I wish I had a warmer sweater, but it also wakes me up. I stare out at the horizon and lose myself in it for a long time.

When I drink the last drop, my body feels full and energized, but my mind is no less muddled. A part of me wants to go back home, not just because it’s the only place that feels familiar, but yet another part wants to go to Hawaii on the off chance that he’s there.

I’ve been trying to put Nicholas out of my mind for a long time but it’s just not working. I thought that him not being on social media would make things easier. But for some reason, it has made this whole process more insufferable.

He is gone.

Vanished.

And the more that the FBI, the police, and who knows who else is looking for him, the further away he seems to be.

If they can’t find him, how can I?

I am sure that there are many women out there right now who would love nothing more than to be actually cut off from contact with their ex. No phone number to text after a few glasses of wine, no social media posts to drool over or get jealous of.

Well, at first I thought I was one of the lucky ones.

I can’t contact him and that means that if I want him out of my life, he is out of my life.

But now?

Now that I really can’t contact him, I’m suddenly full of regret.

I wish there was more that was said.