What Does It Take To Erase a Human Being? A Trans Woman? You, Me?

Erasing is fickle. Things, and people, tend to leave a trace…

Photo by Jonathan Cosens Photography on Unsplash

Erasing is fickle. Things, and people, tend to leave a trace; a smudge, or a faint outline, or the ghostly indentation left by the writing instrument on a surface; a photograph, the fading memory of a smile or a look.

Why do we erase? Mistakes, mostly, or when something more useful surfaces, a better idea, explanation, reason, or maybe there is pleasure in the erasing, in the savageness of running the eraser across a surface. I’ll delete much of what I write here, and the editors will use their erasers as well. We are error-prone, and we seem destined to erase.

I wonder. If things were able to feel, what would they feel as they see the eraser cutting across their body, little-by-little, line-by-line, as the keyboard deletes letter-by-letter, or complete paragraphs, or images? What would that final moment be like when the last vestige of who they are is deleted from existence?

Yes, I would like to know. As a transgender woman the eraser is heading my way, and if those that hold it have their say they will not rest until their savage deed is done.

I don’t cling to life, I live it moment by moment, with ease, yet with absolute abandonment. There is a flow when I do this living, one I don’t question, it was given to me freely, and I take it up freely as well. It’s not about a legacy, or remembrance even. These may count for those that remain, but I don’t pause to consider the relevance of either one, they are not for me, they do not belong to me.

I don’t want to be erased.

Yes, I fear the erasers. The look in their eyes, the words that spill out of their minds onto paper and mouth, the image they hold of me when they don’t know me, the hate they profess in the service of self, because it is in this that they can’t ignore me, in their knowledge that in being who I am I remind them of who they are.

I am their mirror, and they don’t like what they see.

Photo by Elisa Photography on Unsplash

They could see beauty, but they can’t, it is too blunt. They could see softness, but they can’t, it is too threatening. They could see dignity, but they can’t, it is too harsh. They could see equality, but they can’t, it is too simple.

What do they see that their grip on the eraser tightens when they hear my voice, or see me as who I am? Why do they insist on he who is not me? Yes, we are not the same, him and I, we were bound together in one flesh by whatever measure is used, but the flesh tells a story of one surrendering for the other, in harmony, and peace, love, and beauty. What is here they cannot see?

I don’t want to be erased.

Not because I have more to contribute or give. That part of us that sacrificed for others willingly is past, and I see it and smile, for what is there is good. They see it and applaud, for they see in what was accomplished what they find noble, true, and sacred.

Indeed, it is. But the lens of their minds doesn’t see her, and she was there from the beginning. It is an us that is lost in the narrative that insists only she or he is valid. I can’t blame them, the female is overshadowed by the male, obliterated in the story that teaches that the one prevails while the other must submit. In me he lived well, and so did she. The moment has come for him to fade, and for her to emerge in our version of the same story. And this they say cannot be, their story is inviolate.

We didn’t decide if one dies for the other to live. It is not a matter of choosing one over the other, one life for another, one set of variables above another. The life I live is one of remaining true to who I am, and as who I wish to be. Freedom speaks here, as does equality. Both were valid, once.

The freedom I choose is the life we chose. Together in a superbly and skillfully choreographed waltz, we lived well, balanced, harmonious, and in kindness and love, with the understanding both were valid, but only one was meant to be, and that was woman.

They are intent on erasing the equality, self-surrender, love, and yearning that exist in each individual, not as antagonists, as complements. They may choose to subsist as who they are told they are, but I am not a character in their purloined story. I have spoken, and I am woman.

The irony is the eraser and I live under the same roof, we share in the same universal truth of a common ending. We are all eventually erased, the difference is in how it is done, and here I do not fear.