Erasure
by Edward Lee
Only in an abstract, distant sense does Jonathan know he will remember this day for the rest of his life, almost like an echo of a sound that has yet to be made and yet heard all the same, for when he tries to consider the rest of his life as it is at that moment––and he does not try too hard, neither capable or eager to dwell too deeply––he only can see the end of this day, and the hours of the coming night that will be empty of sleep and full of thoughts he does not want to entertain. Tomorrow both exists and does not exist, and, in its existence and non-existence, it is equally terrifying and almost soothing.
When he sees his daughter run towards him, he attempts to pull his mind from dwelling on the night ahead and the thoughts it will contain, and the individual barbed holes––abysses with teeth, he sometimes thinks of them––each of those thoughts hold at their centre, and though not entirely successful, he feels his world slightly right its axis as she jumps into his arms and shouts, “Daddy!” loudly into his ear; there is a kind of erasure here, he knows––and he knows all about erasure, or at least the need for it, the desire - his daughter only knowing him as “Daddy” and not by his name, a removal of everything he is, in her eyes and mind, but his role as her father, though her erasure is unconscious and harmless while his own is deliberate and swollen with harm.
He has not seen her for almost four weeks, or twenty-six days to be precise, the longest he has ever gone without seeing her since she was born seven years ago, a situation he feels is as unnatural as it is heart-breaking. The last time he saw her it was only for a few minutes––he could not hold his tears at bay, or the howl of pain that would accompany those tears, any longer than that and he had not wanted her to see him in such a way, or even worse, frighten her––as he collected some clothes and toiletries from the family home. Three days after that day he checked himself into the psychiatric ward of the local hospital, his hands shaking as though in spasm, his mind a roiling coil of fire, and his throat still sore from the tie he had tried to hang himself with, only finding sense––or, more apt perhaps, sense finding him––when his daughter’s face had flashed before his eyes even as bursts of white flame began to dance in his vision, causing his fingers to scratch at the soft silk pulled tight, guilt and regret warring inside him at what he had been willing to do to erase himself from the world, to quiet the roar of broken noise in his head and heart. Two weeks passed in that place, and it is two weeks he does not want to dwell on, though he knows, in a less abstract way, that not a single day will pass when he does not think of that ward with people who, while more broken than him, had been broken for so long they had made a sort of peace with their cracked and fragile psyches, making them appear less broken than he was; one of the thoughts that keeps him awake at night––one among many, all seemingly wider than his mind can contain––is that maybe he is more broken that he knows himself to be and those other poor souls in the hospital appeared less broken than he was because they were in fact less broken.
Over his daughter’s shoulder, his sees his wife walk towards him, and it is this he will remember for the rest of his life––Jonathan, surprising himself and possibly even his wife, will live into his 70s, at which point he will pass suddenly, almost painlessly, walking up the stairs of his rented house he lives in alone, as he has lived alone since the end of his marriage, the love he still holds for his wife, even after everything, the second last thought he knows, the very last one being of his daughter and how proud he is at the wonderful life she has made for herself––not her walking towards him, though he feels a shard of pain twist laboriously in his heart at the sight of her, a pain somewhat akin to the brief burst he will feel as he sinks to his knees on the stairs when he is seventy years of age, but because she will not walk away and leave them on their own, keeping them both in her eye-line as they walk to the nearby playground. She will do the very same thing the next four times he sees his daughter––all outdoors, in the presence of crowds, and all dictated by his wife, her choosing the days and the times––after which she will text him two days before he is next to see his daughter, telling him that their daughter can now stay over with him one night every second weekend. He knows her thinking behind this of course, and it disgusts him that she could think his crippling need to cease his existence, to erase himself and all the noise and fire of his mind, a need which long predates him meeting his wife, one which lies relatively dormant inside him until some event or action “triggers” it, like a bullet waiting to be fired––in this case, his wife leaving him for a man she had been engaged in an affair with for the last two years of their marriage, the pride with which she admitted this like a second wound inflicted in the middle of the initial wound caused by her informing him she was leaving––could ever mutate into a need to harm his daughter, but he does not have the strength, either physically or mentally, to argue this or anything with her, not at that moment, and not for years to come, all his energy directed towards surviving the depression that has plagued him for as long as he can remember. He knows of course that the argument could be made that his suicide would, if not physically, at the very least mentally, harm his daughter, casting a heavy shadow over her life, but he does not want to dwell on this, nor the guilt he still feels, and will always feel, that he had been so willing to end his life, regardless of the effect it would have had on her, his erasure of himself leaving a mark on her being that would never completely disappear; it will be a need he will never be able to discard, but he will never try to act upon it again, mostly through medication, regular therapy sessions, and shrinking his life down to his daughter and a couple of close friends, thereby reducing the chances of finding himself in any “triggering” situations.
In the months to come, as they begin the long process of dismantling a life together, via solicitors, while still forever connected through their daughter––after the divorce the only communication between them will concern their daughter––this awareness of his wife’s all too apparent opinion of him, of the danger she imagines he poses towards his daughter, will adversely affect his recovery, as too will the dismantling process itself, each letter from his solicitor like a bomb he knows will explode in a fury of blinding light and shrapnel but not exactly when it will do so. His wife will even go so far as to use his stay in the hospital, along with everything he has ever told her about his depression––all tales told, true and unvarnished, near the start of their relationship, as they stood on the cusp of admitting their love for each other, almost like a warning both to her and himself––against him to explain her actions both before the end of their marriage and after, even going so far as to slightly alter moments of their life together to better suit her narrative, not necessarily painting him as a monster but as someone who it was difficult and occasionally stressful to live with; “I sometimes feared I would come home and find him dead,” she will say at one stage, the words conveyed to him through his solicitor, and he will have to leave the room and rush to the bathroom to cry and vomit, his breakfast of that morning scalding his throat and his tears burning his eyes, his very heart twisted inside him at the words, and, also, he cannot deny, though he will admit it no one, a sense of horror that this was how she might have genuinely felt, that he could have, however unintentionally, inflicted this upon the woman he had loved from the very moment he had set eyes upon her at a mutual friend’s birthday party so many years before, her smile all he could see when he was introduced to her, her voice all he could hear when she said his name.
Jonathan holds tightly to his daughter as tears threaten in his eyes, for a moment believing – as he has believed many times over the past few weeks, even as a deeper, more primal part of his mind mocks him for these moments as nothing more than magical thinking––that his wife’s relationship with this other man will soon come to an end, and she will allow him, Jonathan, to return home and the three of them can be a family again. Because that is what they are, after all, a family, a unit of three, three made one. Again, in that deep primal part of himself, that part that can dispassionately examine all the evidence laid before him, like, he imagines, a coroner standing before a body they are about to cut open––and, that primal, cold, knowing part of him cannot help but see their marriage as a still corpse lying between them, the sweetness of its decay beginning to stings their noses––he knows it is a cruel hope, a wounding hope even, but if he learnt anything in the hospital, apart from the fact that he will never go back there again, not willingly at least, it is that even a cruel hope is a better than no hope, especially when suicidal thoughts are all too capable, eager almost, of slipping into the absence left by that missing hope, spreading possessively into every corner of that empty space; he will hold onto this hope for as long as he can, and while it will wound him, and deeply so, it will also, paradoxically, aid him, its mania-infused energy pushing him to endure the nights––those nights devoid entirely of sleep––when the most senseless thoughts make perfect sense.
Jonathan lowers his daughter to the ground, and she runs towards the playground, calling to him to come and push her on the swings. He does so, and in that movement, turning to follow his daughter, he turns his back on his wife. The sharp pain in his chest eases while simultaneously his hope of her taking him back increases, passing from almost shapeless possibility to solid surety – he even feels his breath catch in his throat––and by the time he reaches the swing where his daughter sits waiting, looking at him as though she has been waiting for hours, her head tilted in the very same way that her mother tilts her head when looking at him––she is looking more like her mother with every passing year and less like him––he tells himself that everything is going to be okay, everything, eventually, will be okay.
When he sees his daughter run towards him, he attempts to pull his mind from dwelling on the night ahead and the thoughts it will contain, and the individual barbed holes––abysses with teeth, he sometimes thinks of them––each of those thoughts hold at their centre, and though not entirely successful, he feels his world slightly right its axis as she jumps into his arms and shouts, “Daddy!” loudly into his ear; there is a kind of erasure here, he knows––and he knows all about erasure, or at least the need for it, the desire - his daughter only knowing him as “Daddy” and not by his name, a removal of everything he is, in her eyes and mind, but his role as her father, though her erasure is unconscious and harmless while his own is deliberate and swollen with harm.
He has not seen her for almost four weeks, or twenty-six days to be precise, the longest he has ever gone without seeing her since she was born seven years ago, a situation he feels is as unnatural as it is heart-breaking. The last time he saw her it was only for a few minutes––he could not hold his tears at bay, or the howl of pain that would accompany those tears, any longer than that and he had not wanted her to see him in such a way, or even worse, frighten her––as he collected some clothes and toiletries from the family home. Three days after that day he checked himself into the psychiatric ward of the local hospital, his hands shaking as though in spasm, his mind a roiling coil of fire, and his throat still sore from the tie he had tried to hang himself with, only finding sense––or, more apt perhaps, sense finding him––when his daughter’s face had flashed before his eyes even as bursts of white flame began to dance in his vision, causing his fingers to scratch at the soft silk pulled tight, guilt and regret warring inside him at what he had been willing to do to erase himself from the world, to quiet the roar of broken noise in his head and heart. Two weeks passed in that place, and it is two weeks he does not want to dwell on, though he knows, in a less abstract way, that not a single day will pass when he does not think of that ward with people who, while more broken than him, had been broken for so long they had made a sort of peace with their cracked and fragile psyches, making them appear less broken than he was; one of the thoughts that keeps him awake at night––one among many, all seemingly wider than his mind can contain––is that maybe he is more broken that he knows himself to be and those other poor souls in the hospital appeared less broken than he was because they were in fact less broken.
Over his daughter’s shoulder, his sees his wife walk towards him, and it is this he will remember for the rest of his life––Jonathan, surprising himself and possibly even his wife, will live into his 70s, at which point he will pass suddenly, almost painlessly, walking up the stairs of his rented house he lives in alone, as he has lived alone since the end of his marriage, the love he still holds for his wife, even after everything, the second last thought he knows, the very last one being of his daughter and how proud he is at the wonderful life she has made for herself––not her walking towards him, though he feels a shard of pain twist laboriously in his heart at the sight of her, a pain somewhat akin to the brief burst he will feel as he sinks to his knees on the stairs when he is seventy years of age, but because she will not walk away and leave them on their own, keeping them both in her eye-line as they walk to the nearby playground. She will do the very same thing the next four times he sees his daughter––all outdoors, in the presence of crowds, and all dictated by his wife, her choosing the days and the times––after which she will text him two days before he is next to see his daughter, telling him that their daughter can now stay over with him one night every second weekend. He knows her thinking behind this of course, and it disgusts him that she could think his crippling need to cease his existence, to erase himself and all the noise and fire of his mind, a need which long predates him meeting his wife, one which lies relatively dormant inside him until some event or action “triggers” it, like a bullet waiting to be fired––in this case, his wife leaving him for a man she had been engaged in an affair with for the last two years of their marriage, the pride with which she admitted this like a second wound inflicted in the middle of the initial wound caused by her informing him she was leaving––could ever mutate into a need to harm his daughter, but he does not have the strength, either physically or mentally, to argue this or anything with her, not at that moment, and not for years to come, all his energy directed towards surviving the depression that has plagued him for as long as he can remember. He knows of course that the argument could be made that his suicide would, if not physically, at the very least mentally, harm his daughter, casting a heavy shadow over her life, but he does not want to dwell on this, nor the guilt he still feels, and will always feel, that he had been so willing to end his life, regardless of the effect it would have had on her, his erasure of himself leaving a mark on her being that would never completely disappear; it will be a need he will never be able to discard, but he will never try to act upon it again, mostly through medication, regular therapy sessions, and shrinking his life down to his daughter and a couple of close friends, thereby reducing the chances of finding himself in any “triggering” situations.
In the months to come, as they begin the long process of dismantling a life together, via solicitors, while still forever connected through their daughter––after the divorce the only communication between them will concern their daughter––this awareness of his wife’s all too apparent opinion of him, of the danger she imagines he poses towards his daughter, will adversely affect his recovery, as too will the dismantling process itself, each letter from his solicitor like a bomb he knows will explode in a fury of blinding light and shrapnel but not exactly when it will do so. His wife will even go so far as to use his stay in the hospital, along with everything he has ever told her about his depression––all tales told, true and unvarnished, near the start of their relationship, as they stood on the cusp of admitting their love for each other, almost like a warning both to her and himself––against him to explain her actions both before the end of their marriage and after, even going so far as to slightly alter moments of their life together to better suit her narrative, not necessarily painting him as a monster but as someone who it was difficult and occasionally stressful to live with; “I sometimes feared I would come home and find him dead,” she will say at one stage, the words conveyed to him through his solicitor, and he will have to leave the room and rush to the bathroom to cry and vomit, his breakfast of that morning scalding his throat and his tears burning his eyes, his very heart twisted inside him at the words, and, also, he cannot deny, though he will admit it no one, a sense of horror that this was how she might have genuinely felt, that he could have, however unintentionally, inflicted this upon the woman he had loved from the very moment he had set eyes upon her at a mutual friend’s birthday party so many years before, her smile all he could see when he was introduced to her, her voice all he could hear when she said his name.
Jonathan holds tightly to his daughter as tears threaten in his eyes, for a moment believing – as he has believed many times over the past few weeks, even as a deeper, more primal part of his mind mocks him for these moments as nothing more than magical thinking––that his wife’s relationship with this other man will soon come to an end, and she will allow him, Jonathan, to return home and the three of them can be a family again. Because that is what they are, after all, a family, a unit of three, three made one. Again, in that deep primal part of himself, that part that can dispassionately examine all the evidence laid before him, like, he imagines, a coroner standing before a body they are about to cut open––and, that primal, cold, knowing part of him cannot help but see their marriage as a still corpse lying between them, the sweetness of its decay beginning to stings their noses––he knows it is a cruel hope, a wounding hope even, but if he learnt anything in the hospital, apart from the fact that he will never go back there again, not willingly at least, it is that even a cruel hope is a better than no hope, especially when suicidal thoughts are all too capable, eager almost, of slipping into the absence left by that missing hope, spreading possessively into every corner of that empty space; he will hold onto this hope for as long as he can, and while it will wound him, and deeply so, it will also, paradoxically, aid him, its mania-infused energy pushing him to endure the nights––those nights devoid entirely of sleep––when the most senseless thoughts make perfect sense.
Jonathan lowers his daughter to the ground, and she runs towards the playground, calling to him to come and push her on the swings. He does so, and in that movement, turning to follow his daughter, he turns his back on his wife. The sharp pain in his chest eases while simultaneously his hope of her taking him back increases, passing from almost shapeless possibility to solid surety – he even feels his breath catch in his throat––and by the time he reaches the swing where his daughter sits waiting, looking at him as though she has been waiting for hours, her head tilted in the very same way that her mother tilts her head when looking at him––she is looking more like her mother with every passing year and less like him––he tells himself that everything is going to be okay, everything, eventually, will be okay.
Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib, and Poetry Wales. He is currently working on a novel. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at edwardmlee.wordpress.com.