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# Losing Agency Part 1: The Erasure

Tony Robbins calls humans "Distortion-Deletion Creatures." We distort reality to make it bearable and delete what we can't process.

I didn't understand what he meant until I lost agency of my life in two months.

Then I became a case study in deletion. Everything written on my life's whiteboard—father, husband, designer, coach—erased. Not metaphorically. Actually gone.

This is the story of the erasure. Part 1 of 3.

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## The Whiteboard

Before everything got wiped clean, my whiteboard looked like this:

**Father.** Three boys. I raised them from birth. I was there every single day of their lives until the day I moved out. Every morning, every meal, every bedtime story through grade school. Active, present, involved. That wasn't just what I did—it was who I was.

**Husband.** 22 years married. I supported my spouse's drive to qualify for the Ironman World Championships in Kona. That meant she trained constantly, and I watched the boys. I didn't mind—I loved being with my guys. But I also lost myself somewhere in there. I didn't have enough self-worth to speak up for what I needed. Time alone with her. Time to keep the relationship alive outside of parenthood. I just... disappeared into being supportive.

**Designer.** That's what I did professionally. 30 years across 8 design disciplines, 30 business sectors. It paid the bills. It gave me professional identity. But honestly? It was just another role I performed.

**Coach.** Five years coaching soccer, 2014-2019. Started coaching my youngest son from nothing. Within three years, we won the league. 11 wins, 1 loss. Nearly undefeated. I got a lot of identity from that. Pride. Purpose. Proof I was good at something.

**Location.** I lived in the same place for nearly a quarter-century. From before the turn of the century through 2023. The foothills of Los Padres National Forest. Beautiful, idyllic. I could take my dog on three-mile hikes in the afternoons when work allowed. Temps in the 60s and 70s in winter, perfect for climbing canyons. I had roots there. Deep ones.

That was the life. And looking back now, I realize something: **I had no identity separate from those roles.**

I was Father. Husband. Designer. Coach. Hiker. Supporter.

I didn't know who I was outside of them. I never asked. I just lived into the roles, and they gave me whatever self-worth and self-value I had.

I was the pit crew for everyone else's life. And mine just kind of got left by the wayside.

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## The Two-Month Collapse

The separation process stretched over two years. But the actual move-out—the physical erasure—happened in June 2023.

Three to six weeks before that second week of June, I started packing. Slowly removing my belongings from the house, boxing them up, staging them in the garage. Then I'd load the car with as much as I could fit and drive into town to unload everything into a storage unit.

I did that for weeks.

Keep stuff. Give away stuff. Trash stuff. A good purge, too.

It was surreal to pack my life into boxes. To move it out of the house I'd lived in since 2008. The house where my youngest son was two years old when we moved in. The house I was leaving during his senior year of high school.

I should have asked to stay. Separately, in another room—I would've been fine with that. Just to be there for his senior year, like I'd been there for his brothers. But I didn't ask. And I regret that.

I was very aware of what I was losing as it was happening. But the pain was so intense that I had to dissociate just to function. Day to day, I was numb. Moving boxes. Driving to storage. Coming back.

When I was alone in the car, I cried. A lot. I wept for the life I was losing. But when I had to interact with anyone—my boys, my soon-to-be ex-wife—I went numb. It was the only way to survive.

The second week of June, I loaded the last of my belongings and pulled out of the driveway for the final time.

I drove to the local campground. And that was it.

Twenty-five years in one location. Gone.

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## The Gutting

There's a Japanese ritual called seppuku—sometimes called harikiri—where a samurai takes a sword and drives it through their own abdomen, just below the sternum. It's a gutting. Ceremonial, deliberate, final.

That's what it felt like.

Not the ceremonial part—that comes later, when I filed for divorce. But the gutting? That happened in those two months.

I felt this weird combination of numbness and vacuum. Like there was suddenly this gigantic empty space inside me where my identity used to be.

*I'm not a coach anymore.*

*I'm not actively a father day-in, day-out.*

*I'm not a husband.*

Even though I was still technically my boys' father, psychologically my brain told me that being a father had been stripped away. Because I couldn't be part of their daily lives anymore. And daily presence—that's what fatherhood *was* to me.

So I was left with a big empty hole. And I didn't know who I was.

*Who am I?*

I asked myself that question over and over. And I couldn't answer it.

I couldn't even tell you what some of my favorite things were. I'd lost myself so completely in being a father, a husband, a coach, that when those things were gone, there was nothing underneath.

It was like losing my entire being. Or at least, that's how it felt at the time.

Only later did I realize what I'd actually lost was ego identity—the roles I'd lived into so deeply that I'd psychologically fallen into each one and lost connection with my inner self. The self that exists separate from all other things.

But in that moment? I had no fucking clue. I just knew I was gutted.

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## What People Ask

When people ask "What do you do?" or "Tell me about yourself," what do you say when all those old answers are gone?

I'm honest.

*Right now, I'm rebuilding my life. My life fell apart.*

*I'm recently divorced. I lost my home. I lost my daily role as a father. I lost what little finances I had because I spent it on food and campgrounds and the basic stuff of staying alive.*

That's the answer now. Not father, husband, designer, coach. Just: *I'm rebuilding.*

Because the whiteboard got erased. And I'm still figuring out what to write on it next.

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## This Is Part 1 of 3

This is the erasure. The moment everything on the whiteboard got wiped clean. The roles gone, the identity collapsed, the gutting.

But this isn't where it ends.

**This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on losing agency.**

In **Part 2**, I'll walk you through what it's like to live outside the snow globe—watching life happen around you while you're no longer inside it. The campground-to-street transition. The Starbucks mornings pretending to still be part of society. The weird duality of existing in two worlds simultaneously.

In **Part 3**, we'll explore what agency actually remains when everything's been stripped away. What you can control versus what controls you. The difference between "I made bad choices" and "the ground disappeared beneath me." And what it means to rebuild when you don't even know who you are anymore.

For now, just know this: **I'm still here. I survived the erasure.**

And I'm documenting it so you know you can too.

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**Part 2 coming Sunday.**

projects/019b911d-f20f-750b-b3a5-6f31fe0322f8.json#docs/3:Losing Agency Part 1: The Erasure.md

Losing Agency Part 1: The Erasure.md