Effaced
originally published 1/16/2021 in UnBound Zine Issue 8.
Like black and white, we see life and death as a dichotomy. That we exist or we don’t as if anything in this universe is remotely that binary. Sometimes we’re grey. Sometimes we’ve been effaced and left with nothing but emotion and a whisper of a memory. We relive our routine with all its suffering. And we all eventually forget the trauma that led us to the repetitive habits. It all just becomes normal and one day, you’ll forget the routine while the world forgets you.
Maybe the slow progress into nothingness should be upsetting, maybe I should be horrified at the thought that death is a lengthy and prolonged affair. Somehow, I’m comforted. Somehow, knowing that what I feel is so strong it lives on until I can’t remember why it happened in the first place, makes life more worth living. Believing that everything I am will one day be forgotten and dissipated into my surroundings gives my existence meaning. The nothingness is a comfort.
This piece is a representation of forgetting and being forgotten. It was inspired by The Haunting of Bly Manor’s Lady of the Lake (cannot recommend that show enough). In a sense, creating this has locked me out of the sweet release of truly being forgotten. Maybe that in itself is a statement.
Click below to see this piece in it’s original context.
