At the suggestion of a colleague, I decided to try out watching The Leftovers. It’s an HBO TV show that is based off of a book about how randomly one day, 2 percent of population suddenly disappears off the face of the earth, and the rest of the population is left to cope. Some really gripping images confront you when the show begins: a mother is securing her baby into a car baby seat, and as she hops into the driver’s seat to start the car, she looks back and her baby is suddenly gone. A man is cheating on his wife, mid-coitus with another woman, and just like that, the woman he’s having sex with disappears into thin air. As society is trying to move on and decipher what exactly happened, another minority group joins together as the “Guilty Remnant” to torment and constantly remind everyone of who they lost and how they shouldn’t move on. These people don’t speak, only communicate with writing, and wear white tarpy outfits and smoke. They’re like a cult.

It’s hard to imagine people you love randomly disappearing from your life. The idea not only that you’d have no closure, but that random people smoking and wearing white would constantly remind you that those people left you without explanation would be torturous and bring even more pain than you’d already have. I already feel so uncomfortable when I don’t have proper closure from people in my life now. I’d probably go insane in a world like the one in this show.