Erasing it and ignoring it won't make it go away.

The guilt opened up like a well and swallowed him whole. And even then, he denied it. He looked around at his new surroundings and noticed bright spots of light, tainted with guilt and confusion, spread aimlessly about his new home. Startled, he ran around, uprooting the bright spots and burying them, by the dozen, in corners of his mind, trying to ignore the pit in his stomach, the aching in his heart. He did not want to be reminded. Could not be reminded if this was ever going to work. For hours, for days, he ran around, uprooting, burying and trying desperately to forget. Yes, there was happiness, but there was also shame and guilt and worthlessness. There was also doubt and questioning and exhaustion. He was confused. He was so, so confused. And if there was one thing he hated, it was confusion. He could not deal with confusion. Instead, he pretended that it didn't exist. That the reasons for his confusion did not exist. That these bright spots, with their guilt and confusion, but also with their happiness and love, had never existed at all. So he ran around and around, burying, burying, burying his own past, his own feelings -- all the things that he had known and felt.

 

Finally, after 14 days, it seemed that he had gotten most, if not all of the bright spots. Now, he could sit in his darkness and not even see his own hands before him. Not even hear the beating of his own heart. And in this darkness, he found comfort. No more bright spots throbbing before him, no more whispers of a past he was now too weak to bear. He still felt the guilt, the shame, the confusion, sometimes still remembered, with a pang, the intense happiness -- but if he sat still enough, closed his eyes and barely breathed, he could begin to pretend he had never done what he had done, that he had never felt what he had felt, that it had all never really existed at all.