Missing Person.

Marie has gone missing....literally.

After five months of silence: no phone calls, no texts about boys and Kitchen Nightmares, I push past my fears that Marie just no longer wanted to be friends (hence the silence treatment) and reached out to her on her birthday. It's her favorite holiday, more so than Christmas and thanksgiving.

Even when we are mad and livid at each other, our birthdays are a big deal. We celebrate for weeks leading up to it and send texts back and forth reminding one another, as if we'd forget, of the impending day. But with no word from her since July, I was starting to think something was up. September came and week, October flew by, and come November (after a few 'hey where the hell are you texts) when she had not called to ask if we could meet up for Thanksgiving back home, as we sometimes do, i began to worry more.

And then Tuesday, December the 6th, came around. Marie's 26th birthday. The only day of the year where she is completely and unabashedly proud of being a nuisance and making sure everyone knows it hers birthday....there was nothing but silence from her end. I sent her five or six texts that day. I rehearsed my 'you know friends don't treat friends like this' speech, I even then prepared my apology speech for the reprimanding one. But only silence. Complete and utter Silence.

I never thought Silence could feel so....empty. I usually prefer it.

By midnight I was freaking out. Because I am often a selfish, selfish girl I assumed her lack of response to my calls had something to do with her being mad at me. I mean I did call the dude she was interested in (the married one) an old, balding, hefty fellow. I do have a tendency of talking about myself (and personal problems a lot), maybe it's me. But after the awkwardness that was (is) no word from her, I started to think maybe it's her. Maybe she is in trouble or hurt or in a jam. Maybe, jesus christ, I don't want to assume it is anything worse...

So I finally called her, after a six week break from dialing her number, and for fucks sake her phone is no longer in service. I got a freaking 'this number is no longer active, if you feel this is an error please hang up and try again" recording. So I did, for an hour straight. To hear the same damn message over and over again.

Marie doesn't have a facebook account, she doesn't believe in any sort of social networking pages and I am her only friend from high school and college. I am her closest friend (i think) and she has all but disappeared from Earth. I spent the next couple of hours searching through news archives from her town to see if, snerk gerks, anything terrible had happened. But she may be the only person in the world whose name does not pop up in our info age. I searched for any clue to her absence: an accident, missing persons report SOMETHING. And nothing popped up in any of the local feeds. I then tried to reach her work email, which too has been erased.

In a panic, I called the extension to her job that she gave me a few years back, and the phone just continued to ring for a solid minute! This is fucking terrifying people. What happens if something terrible has happened to her and I have been completely absorbed in my own....issues...to pay attention to the clues.

Last night, as a last ditch effort, I reached out to the married guy I thought she was hooking up with (he sent me a facebook message once because Marie said he would never be able to find me on facebook) in hopes that he would have some information. A few hours later, I received a message saying he too had not heard from Marie in a few months and was going to contact me to see if I had her mom or sisters number. Or you freaking serious?!

I've been in conact with him since yesterday and the things I have learned about the last few months are unreal: she left her job in July and moved back home sometime in September to live with her mom and sister, she was having uber issues where she was, and the two of us are her only contact...in the WORLD.

He called just a few minutes ago (but left a voicemail) because he said the email message I sent last night (about the last few convo's i had with her in July) had him questing how much I knew about Marie's life in North Carolina. That there are some things she obviously left out during our conversations about Kitchen Nightmares. I am confused, and terrified and scared. I feel like I am either looking for a person who doesn't want to be found or worse....a ghost.

I am seriously in a state of shock and disbelief. I wont/ can't allow myself to think beyond trying to find what the hell happened to her and where she could have gone. I am a little hesitant to talk to her last contact in North Carolina for fear of revealing and finding out too much about Marie's life there. But at the same time, not knowing if she is okay, alive and doing well is the worst feeling in the world.

I don't know what to do. I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd have to consider the next steps to take in finding a person who has suddenly...gone missing.