ERASED

There is a feeling I don't think people talk about enough, probably because it sounds dramatic when you say it out loud.

It is the feeling of being erased.

Not left. Not rejected. Not even abandoned.

Erased.

Like you existed in someone's life for years, mattered deeply, occupied an enormous amount of space, and somehow the world has begun reorganizing itself as though you were never there at all.

I know I am not unique. Families fall apart every day. Marriages end. Children prefer one parent sometimes. Stepfamilies change. People die. People move on. I understand all of that logically, and I know there are people living through much worse things than I am. But knowing something is common does not make the experience of it less brutal.

If anything, it makes me wonder why we don't talk about this particular part more. My youngest daughter wants her daddy right now. She wants to be with Daddy. She wants to live with Daddy. She wants Daddy when she has a choice. And I am not going to make a three-year-old responsible for protecting my feelings. I am not going to force her to be with Mama because Mama desperately wants to be wanted.

I love her too much for that. She gets to love her daddy. She gets to want him. She gets to feel whatever she feels without having to carry the emotional consequences for me.

But I am still her mama.

And God, it hurts to feel like she doesn't want me.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

I can do what I believe is right for my daughter and still privately feel absolutely gutted by it. I can refuse to make her feel guilty and still admit that there is something uniquely painful about the child who once reached for you deciding she would rather be somewhere else.

Then my aunt died.

Work has been overwhelming.

Everything has felt heavy for so long that I had actually started believing I was getting pretty good at carrying it. And the last couple of days, I had even started feeling a little more like myself. I felt like maybe, just maybe, I almost had my friend back.

There were conversations that felt familiar again. Moments that made me think maybe not everything had been completely lost.

Then I came home today and saw more things gone.

Things belonging to my daughter.

Things from my stepson.

More traces of the family I knew removed from the place where I still live.

And I didn't think, “My life is disappearing.”

I thought, “I am.”

That is the difference.

It isn't really about the things.

I don't care about the things.

It is what they represent.

It is the terrifying feeling that everyone else's life is continuing and I am slowly being edited out of the story.

That my daughter can have a home without me in it.

That a child I loved as my own can have a life where I no longer have a role.

That people who once made up my everyday life can eventually build days and routines and memories that have nothing to do with me.

And I know that is how life works.

I know people survive divorce. I know children adapt. I know relationships change and everyone eventually establishes some new version of normal.

But there is something profoundly painful about realizing that someone's new normal may require less and less of you until eventually it requires none of you at all.

That is what being erased feels like.

It feels like wondering whether you mattered as much as you thought you did.

It feels like looking at people you would still recognize anywhere and realizing you may eventually become somebody they used to know.

It feels like having years of memories inside your own head while watching everyone around you create lives where those memories have less and less relevance.

And there is an embarrassment to admitting that.

Because the dignified thing is supposed to be, “I wish everyone well. I am moving forward. Everything happens for a reason.”

Maybe I will get there.

Tonight, I am not there.

Tonight I want to admit the less attractive truth.

I don't want to be erased.

I don't want my daughter to stop wanting Mama.

I don't want to become irrelevant to people who once made up most of my world.

I don't want years of loving, parenting, showing up, fighting, forgiving, cooking dinner, buying Christmas presents, worrying, laughing, arguing, celebrating birthdays and living ordinary Tuesdays to somehow become a chapter everyone else has already finished reading.

I want to have mattered.

Maybe that is what this feeling is really about.

Not wanting everything back exactly the way it was.

Not demanding that anyone stay.

Not refusing to accept that life changes.

Just wanting some evidence that my existence left a mark.

That I was not interchangeable.

That I was not simply a role someone else could fill.

That my daughter will someday remember the way Mama loved her even if, right now, she would rather be with Daddy.

That the people who were once my family will remember that I was their family too.

That something of me remains.

Because I think one of the hardest things a person can experience is loving people enough to let them choose a life that may not include you, and then having to live with the silence that follows.

I will not force anyone to choose me.

I will not make my daughter responsible for making me feel loved.

I will not beg for a place in anyone's life.

But I am also not going to lie and pretend it doesn't hurt when I feel that place getting smaller.

Maybe people don't talk about being erased because there isn't a neat lesson at the end of it.

I don't have one tonight.

I don't have some beautiful revelation about starting over.

I don't have a tidy little sentence about closed doors and new beginnings.

I just know what it feels like to stand inside your own life and wonder whether everyone you love is slowly learning how to live without you.

And what you want more than anything in that moment isn't necessarily for them to come back.

Sometimes you just want to know that you were there.

That you mattered.

That you are still somewhere inside the lives you helped build.

That you cannot be erased that easily.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney at Law

Hampton Law Firm, LLC

THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

Life does not always fit neatly into a legal file.

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