--More thoughts –
Yes, I do know what you mean, MMQC. IMO -when that flip of the switch happens, we often scare ourselves, too.
-- I think what you are saying about Sylvia ties into the PR (something EL knew), and then her disappearance, in a sequence of events. We don’t have a crystal ball and the road signs in some people are nonexistent. After the party, I gather she retreated into a “Fort Knox silence” with her father. In her retreat, things look normal, just not speaking to her father, but how was she processing the freak out, damage control with the party guests, etc.? To not speak to someone you live with is an edgy, steely cold place to be, and so very sad as I am sure she and her father would have worked it out and forgiven each other. But this tells me something deeper was possibly quite suppressed in her. -Maybe the bigness of it is unbeknownst to her, as well?
-And, in this sequence there is her BF/F –and the pieces of Sylvia that he knows. The impression I am getting is he is not a part of something that is happening to her, maybe is intolerant of her emotions, has her on the image pedestal of the future good wife, and then something crashes. Which way does it go? Yes, quite possibly something escalated and he went beyond the point of no return. It sure looks that way. –But, I also see how easy it would have been in 1975 for her to sail away into another life.
Something that puzzles me is --if the BF/F had nothing to do with her disappearance (except as catalyst) wouldn’t he want to know what happened to the beautiful woman who was to be his wife, as much as anyone else? - Even if they broke up? -Even if she threw the ring and stormed off into the night? Even after being hostile to everyone… Or, does he know what happened?
These are just thoughts - Because we don’t always know what can send a young person over the edge, I have had some dark thoughts about Sylvia, too, such as: if she was unable to cope with her decision to leave, or find her way back, could she have committed suicide under an assumed name at a later date? Are there any suicides in the family (previous generations)? Or, were the mental hospitals ever checked 5-10 years later? I say this because of my own family history, and also because a high school girlfriend of mine (sweetest girl ever) became schizophrenic in her early 20’s. It was quite sudden. She was in and out of the mental institution. I would take her in when she was roaming the streets. And, thankfully she is “ok” as someone can be but hers was a rough ride, to be sure…
Freak outs and breakdowns are often about the truth- imo. When my switch flipped at 24 years old, I went silent. My usually sunny disposition fell dark. -The life force was absolutely drained. I had been so adult, on my own for years and I had to stop, look around, go home to my mother for a while, ditch some people who were not good for me, and really look at my life. It took a year for me to calm down and finally hear the voice that was trying to emerge amidst all the chaos.
Thanks for that, Rose. I had a similar experience a few years later in my 20s and, hard as it was at the time, I am grateful for it. It made me start living
as me. I am not 100% sure, if I had disappeared on the brink of that experience, what signs I would have left behind ... what people would say they observed of my relationship at the time, or the things I talked about. I did always keep a journal. I know my "implosion" had been building for years,
I just wasn't willing to acknowledge it. Were others? Would my own trail have been as cold as this one? Would yours, do you think? This sort of thing is definitely possible for SL. The little she left behind leaves us connecting very few dots to get there, but this is also my best guess for whatever happened to her -- be it murder, flight, or suicide.
While it says nothing about what
did happen, I like to think she was starting to realize what she wanted from her future. Here she was, what appears to be the first in her family to go to college, studying bio/science (at the time, a male-dominated field). She had already had (at least two) sexual relationships, one deemed "casual" by her BFF (but that became very serious by virtue of the abortion), and another leading to engagement. By now, she may have figured out what she
wanted from relationships, as opposed to what she could give. What we see as her trajectory with the BF/F may have been the path she was
programmed for -- the one she and everyone else thought she would take (traditional Plan A, so to speak) -- but by Sept. 1975 she may have just been going through the motions.
Meanwhile, the seeds of Plan B may have been germinating. "Bio major" suggests some brains for me, and after she "tried out" the traditional path, I can totally see her freaking out about it and looking over her shoulder for Plan B. She was interested in marine biology. Woods Hole and San Diego would have been the places to be. Maybe she was thinking of getting a masters, maybe a lab job, maybe a job training dolphins at Sea World! Who knows? But the whole world was in front of her -- how could she not see that? How could she not want a bite?
I see a break-up, initiated by her, as potentially emerging from that, with unexpected consequences. But what if she could not accept the change in herself? Self-loathing and turmoil could have led to the rash choice of suicide. And if she thought the mess she was leaving behind in making such a choice would be too hard to clean up, she could have left. We do not really know what her family relationships were like; there could have been reasons she never looked back.
As to the possibility of suicide, I agree it is a legitimate possibility, both in the way you describe (as a later event or with a mental imbalance as a complicating factor) and as a contemporary one (1975). Difficulty accepting the kind of life transformation we're talking about, or fear that others won't be able to accept it,
can end this way. I know it's been said on the thread that there were no signs. But having worked around high schools, I have seen more families than I care to remember say just that after a young person's suicide:
They were always so good, such a good student, we didn't think anything was wrong. I know the absence of a body presents another barrier for this, but I still don't think it's impossible -- esp. bc we don't know where she might have done this.
The usual disclaimer: I am not saying
I think this is what happened. I am just unable to eliminate it. Ironically, I don't think we know much more than we did at the beginning of thread one! Deeper reasons for the same range of possibilities. All JMO.
Re the BBM:
Acc. to
ASWDH's T2 Post 806 (BBM):
"As far as the overall search has now proceeded,
All mental hospitals in the U.S. were checked, passport office for a match, all airport, cruise ships, charters, any means of transport out of the U. S. were checked. All prisons, missing or unidentified bodies/coroner dept all states."
