The pain of being erased from your own family’s life
Today I saw a photo with my niece.
She was on the balcony of what was once my home, watching a parade. It has been nine months since the last time I saw my niece and nephew.
Nine months without a single photo, without their faces, their voices, their laughter. And suddenly, there she was in a picture — standing on the balcony of the apartment I once renovated with my own hands. The home that, not so long ago, was still mine.
The photo was not meant to hurt me. My cousin sent it without knowing the truth.
But for me, it felt like being torn apart inside. Because my family has forbidden me from seeing the children. They have erased me from their lives as if my love didn’t matter. As if my existence could be cut off and vanish — as if I had never belonged.
This is the kind of cruelty that hides behind silence.
They’ve never said the words out loud — but they refuse any contact. They act as if keeping me away were normal, as if it were justified.
But it isn’t.
It is punishment. It is control. It is erasure.
And it is unbearable.
I don’t want this pain for them.
Not now, not when they’re adults, not ever. I don’t want them to grow up in a world where love is turned into a weapon. Where punishment and control disguise themselves as care.
I want them to know another reality. To know that real love does not forbid or control. That connection is not something to be rationed. That family should be a place of safety, not a place where love is used as leverage.
Right now, I carry the pain they cannot see.
I live the silence that has been imposed on me. But I will not let this silence define me.
I am building something so that no one will ever be able to do to them what my family is doing to me.
I love them. I always will. No matter how much they try to push me away.
—Anna
