Fear of Abandonment
I missed my ex last night.
Its easy enough to get there because I’m still alone and its the holiday season. It doesn’t mean that I fell in love again. It doesn’t mean that logically I feel like it makes sense for me to continue to have feelings. It just happens to come up some times. All of the memories I have from my twenties are shared with someone with whom I no longer speak. Someone I can’t even reach out to because he moved on with his life like I was supposed to do. I made it easy for him, I made it even easier for her. I took the punch (literally), I was the one choked out, and I chose the hard way for myself.
I know he wasn’t good for me. Is it that I’m meant to be alone? Of course, that’s the one thing I miss most about being in a relationship, is not being alone. I can’t be strong all the time, yet I am tested over and over again. When I think I am doing well, it gets even more difficult. Its hard sometimes not to feel like God has forgotten me. But every time I get through that peak of the pain, it subsides. I work myself up to that climax and then find some way back down. Whether that is crying or waiting until I can finally shut my eyes and sleep it off.
I woke up this morning a little cold. This camper doesn’t do very much to keep the weather out. My little space heater and three blankets, plus a down comforter kept me toasty throughout the night, but the second I lifted the covers, I felt the draft coming in through the cracks in the windows. I fed the outdoor cats, as I usually do in the mornings now that my mom is staying in the house with my grandparents. Lately, I’ve been feeling grateful for this period of my life. I know when I look back on this, I’ll be proud of myself for taking the time to build better relationships with my elders. For the most part, I am content. I have food, shelter, water, and love.
On the other hand, I face everyone else’s mental state, of which they seem to be mostly unaware. Grandpa is bringing everyone to Dementia Town with him, and nobody seems to think they can be infected with this mind virus. As far as I’m concerned, my practice is what helps me to endure. It seems like nobody else wants to try to help me steer this ship towards sanity. I have my own way of meditating, and far be it from me to instruct anyone else on how they should. I do, however, think it would bring major improvements if it were just grandpa suffering from his illness. Its almost like everyone has given up on fixing things, which is strange because my family has always been the type to rig something up instead of going to buy new.
We are all just riding until the wheels fall off, now. There’s a part of me that wonders if I really should go off on my own, but for what? When we think things will be better somewhere else, they usually aren’t. We have to love our circumstances as they are before we can open ourselves to new ones. There’s also this theme of abandonment that keeps coming up for me. I don’t want to be. My dad was by his mom. My mom was by my dad. My grandma was by her mom. My ex was by me. Its everywhere. A deep ancestral wound of abandonment, something we’ve all suffered from. We feel abandoned by our creator. It isn’t true, though. We abandoned our Self. We forgot the Creator, we forgot how to co-create, we were conditioned to think inside the box, and so we closed ourselves in, trying to find the answers we were promised.
When I’m emotional and feeling alone, I keep this one thing in mind. I’m safe and most importantly, I’m here to observe. I’m here to bear witness to the mercy of God.
“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” -Audrey Hepburn
Originally written in Collective Journaling at the Stoa
