The terror of abandonment

I'm not in the mood to talk you out of it. Abandonment hurts and the prospect of it is terrifying. The miracle is that it doesn't happen more often or in more painful ways.

We're shockingly relational. We depended on adults to care for us, hold us, and love us for at least 18 years. During this period, we brought them inside of us. Their words, tone, voice, threats, successes, and failures. We brought them in to help fend off those failures, to help us not end up alone. 'Okay, someone I love can hit me when they're mad. The hitting is threatening to me...so what can I do to not bring out that reaction from this person and any other that I love?'

Okay, so we rarely think that kind of thing consciously, but something like this happens inside us as we navigate the tightrope walk that is loving and needing others yet knowing they can leave us at any time. It's a terror, and at least you know it. Long-term therapy can help with intense fears of abandonment and its attendant hangups. But for now, we can let it exist.

Nothing can be done to fend it off. In fact, many such efforts result in abandonment or something close to it, by accident. Self-fulfilling prophecies happen all the time. Knowing you're terrified or something can give you lots of power. Further, the knowledge of the inevitability of loss, in whatever form, gives you power. Abandonments happen, and will happen. I can almost never choose how they happen, or when, or where. Thus, I know I hate it and am scared of it. Then, at least, I can avoid self-fulfilling prophecies where my efforts to avoid the pain will only drive others away.

In the end, our helplessness in the face of the most human of all experiences may be our deliverance. It may be the only thing that can make that thing less terrifying.

The miracle is that it doesn't happen more often or in more painful ways.