ABANDONMENT ISSUES

Before we can come to ask ourselves as to why people abandon us, we first have to come to accept that more often than not, we were the first to abandon ourselves. That in the face of discomfort, scrutiny or needing external validation we abandon ourselves, our values, our goals, the promises you made to yourself, the new years resolution. Your intuition. Often we leave ourselves behind when we meet new people, too afraid to show up as ourselves and be rejected and be abandoned. You set yourself up as a clear canvas, ready to be whatever the situation needs you to be, whatever painting you need to become to fit that collection. That exhibition. 

Let's be honest, our fear of rejection and abandonment makes us play stupid games. In a hurry to abandon yourself before they can abandon you, in a hurry to abandon ourselves for a version with a little certainty that it won't be rejected. Unfortunately, it's a game we can not keep up with, you abandon yourself often enough and you'll start seeing strangers in your mirror, ghosts of who you were meant to be haunting who you are from behind your eyes. 

A lot of it we do because we want to be liked, to be loved, to be seen, but the expense is steep. The more we abandon ourselves the more we trust ourselves less, because let's face it; How can we trust ourselves when we've never made good on our own commitments to ourselves anyway. When you go back even when you said you'd never, the self care days you skipped, the boundaries we neglect to keep and enforce, the words we let burn our throats till they turn into ash waiting to be expressed. 

I have, more times than i want to admit. Abandoned myself for someone , something else. Always making excuses as to why I can do it again, why they can come back into my life, into my circle into my space. There's always been reason, plenty, not good reason but reason enough to leave myself behind. As I write this, I am coming to terms with my own role in my abandonement. The brick is placed for this wall to be so thick with memories of it. I'm not to be acquitted. I've put myself in places I wouldn't be there to look at now, leaving myself locked in a room somewhere so I could show up as what and who I think I ought to be. So I am not kicking anybody down here, I'm just saying maybe if we stopped abandoning ourselves  maybe there wouldn't be a need to try and hold on to things that no longer serve us, there wouldn't be a need to be static.