Erasure
on burdens and being erased
It’s a weird thing to be erased from someone’s life, like you were a mistake to be deleted, disappeared. You feel dispensable, like you don’t matter.
We said at the beginning of the end that we’d remain friends, that we’d get together and go out to breakfast and catch up on each other’s lives and talk about music and tv shows. Well, he said that. He promised that. I willingly played along, thinking how mature, how good it would be to keep a fourteen year relationship somewhat intact, to continue that camaraderie we had. I should have known.
Our interactions now are all text-based. I haven’t seen him since February, and that was for two minutes when he dropped something off. He hasn’t even asked to see the dog. Our conversations revolve around the house or the divorce. He stopped asking how I was doing, he stopped asking about the dog and the kids. So I stopped, too. I stopped asking how he was, asking about his sick father and worried mother. It felt futile to attempt to carry on a conversation. It also felt rather humiliating.
Guilt is a burdensome thing. I have none; I’ve done nothing wrong. But he - having abandoned me with no warning in a cowardly and secretive manner - has plenty. He has said as much and I when he said it I let it go without trying to make him feel better about things, which is my usual way of doing things. Let him have his guilt, let it burden him, let it be carried with him for a long time. I know my heartbreak, my hurt and anguish will linger for years, so I will not unburden him of his guilt. But that guilt keeps him from wanting to see me, to maintain that friendship he swore we would have. It keeps him from talking to me, from having a friendly conversation, from even asking how I’m holding up. He doesn’t want to look me in the eye, and he doesn’t want to know.
So I’ve been erased. It’s been two weeks since I heard from him last, when I contacted him to get the account number for our water bill. I’ll have to talk to him about something to do with the house soon. But if not for that stuff, I’d be a ghost to him, someone possibly wandering the hallways of his brain, half seen, half heard, but not a real entity. And as such, he’s become a ghost to me, a specter where there used to be a presence, a remnant of a life I thought would never end. He will haunt me until the end of time in the way I hope the ghost of our life together haunts him.
But I know him, and I know the guilt will subside, his life will go on, he will forget about me and everything we had together while I go on feeling erased. This is my burden, I suppose, something I’m supposed to carry around with me until therapy and time help heal. The feeling of being eradicated, of being tossed aside like clothes you won’t wear anymore is almost too much to bear. It does a number on your sense of worth. What was I worth to you, I ask the empty side of my bed. What were all those years worth? How can you just discard them, and me, and walk away so easily. I whisper the words into the night, knowing I’ll never hear an answer.
It is up to me to turn away from needing the answers. That would allow him to unburden himself and I won’t allow that. I need him to feel that guilt at least for a while. I can go back and read the emails where he professes to still care for me, to still want to be friends and wonder what happened. I can text him and ask him about it, ask him if he still wants to hold up his end of the bargain. But I’ll wait. I’ll wait until I need to ask him something about the house or the dog insurance and I won’t ask him how he’s doing this time. I can wield an eraser as well.