I Feared Abandonment, And That’s Exactly What I Got

It’s funny isn’t it? How the one thing we fear most in this world, that we try desperately with all we have to avoid, tends to be the one thing that never fails to come our way? That was me with abandonment.

It was my worst nightmare, my most anxious thought, and it was pure irrationality. Or so I thought. Until all I thought, became all I knew. And by that I mean that the sick manifestations that lived in my head, started to live in my life. And my nightmares were no longer those in which I could soon awake from.

It was the worst with men. I desperately wanted to be loved by anyone, but especially by a man. I wanted someone to come into my life, and stay. I didn’t want them to be scared away. But every single time I had a moment to recognize the blessings of human beings that were placed in my life, I had just a little moment longer to catastrophically imagine in my head the tragedy that would be them leaving.

So that’s exactly what they did. They left.

The first few times it’s easy to blame them, or outside circumstances, or fate… but once you’ve established a clear patter, it becomes hard to stay in denial any longer.

Maybe it was me?

BINGO.

I feared abandonment, and that’s exactly what I got. Now that’s not to say that I deserved it, no one deserves the pain of being left behind. But I did allow it to happen, and more than that, I forced it to happen. Time and time again.

Our minds are powerful things. We underestimate the role they play in just about everything.

“It’s all in your head” they’d tell me. I used to respond with an angry “no.” It wasn’t all in my head. How could it be? People were quite clearly leaving me, and that was no figment of my imagination. Now I can reply with a calm and collected “I know.” They were right all along; it IS all in my head. But what they got wrong, was that that wasn’t the solution, it was exactly the problem.

It was so imbedded in my head that every time a man came into my life and I decided I wanted to keep him, that that would be the same moment he decided to leave. And as much as that seemed to be it, there was much more behind the scenes.

You see, when we wish so hard for something not to happen, we begin to act in a way that wills exactly that to happen. I was afraid they would leave, so I gave them every reason to. I feared them distancing themselves, so I pushed them away. I was terrified of the gaping hole it would leave in my heart if, or should I say when, they left that I began to dig the hole myself before the thought of leaving had even crossed their minds.

Because it didn’t have to be on their mind, because it was ALWAYS on mind. What we think, we become. And I thought about abandonment so much that abandoned soon became my identity.

We all do this, in one way or another. We try to beat the pain to the punch and spare ourselves some anguish. We think not “if” it happens but “when” it happens so that we will be prepared for the battle of despair that is to come. But what happens if that battle we are fighting so hard to protect ourselves from, is really a battle of destruction, a war that we are waging upon ourselves?

So maybe we can’t 100% decide who comes into our lives, who stays, and who goes. But what we can do is cherish those who come, and be at peace with those who go. We have the power to learn from those we meet, and love what each of them brings. Or we have to power self destruct, to intervene. I chose to let my mind destroy every relationship that came my way. I wanted them to stay so badly that I gave them a thousand and one reasons to leave. But I no longer choose to live that way,

So starting now, starting today, I choose to take chances, not only on love, but also on letting myself be loved. Yeah, there is always the chance of getting hurt. And I won’t forget that. But there is also the chance that things might end up more beautiful than we can ever imagine. So as for me, I’m going to live in that light, in that hope, and I refuse to ever again be, the identity of abandonment that was me.