Fear of Abandonment
Reread some chapters of one of the comics I've read in the past few days and going 🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒 but at the same time the comic has an abandonment arc and it really caught me off guard the first time. But because of how that whole thing made me feel I'm going to remember this comic for a long time. Can't believe it both cringe monkey'd and also trauma-dug into me.
I didn't reread the abandonment arc but even thinking about it I just... damn. That could happen to me. One time years ago my sister played a interview or whatever with an undocumented student who one day came home and found their parents missing because they had been captured and deported by ICE. I just started bawling because it was such a deep-cutting fear, even though I have nothing in common identity wise with those targeted by the government. My sister was saying it couldn't happen to me and I knew that, because we're citizens and our parents got in on preferential visas. It wasn't about the immigration part, it was just straight up about the one day you come home and anyone who's supposed to care for you is gone forever and you have to fend for yourself.
I don't know why I feel this so strongly. I know I feel abandoned by my parents at various points in my life whether or not that was their intention but it seems outsized. It feels like I shouldn't feel this way, but I do and it makes me scared.
I'm scared whenever I'm alone with my thoughts for too long. It could all disappear tomorrow. I just believe this fact and I don't think I will ever not believe it because I don't know what it's like to feel loved unconditionally. And honestly if someone tried to offer me that I would probably react in disgust. I mean, nothing's more disgusting than believing in the impossible just for someone to pull the rug out from under you and go, "Psyche, lol!"
People who love romantically have expectations about relationships and physicality that are so tiresome and ridiculous and I want nothing to do with it. People who love platonically with their friends naturally have many friends and many people they love, and other people are more important than me, anyway. The ideal friend is one who has their own life and is helpful and nice to me, but naturally this also is a reminder that they owe me nothing and will one day get up and walk out of my life. People are always too busy for me, and when they aren't it's because they need emotional help far more than I do so that becomes my role. That's ok and I purposefully choose my friends this way so I don't feel threatened.
However. Sometimes the reality dawns on me and I get so scared of being abandoned even though I try to microdose on it all the time in hopes that I get used to it so I can handle The Final Abandonment whenever it comes. But it doesn't really work because I'm not skilled enough to take care of myself in every dimension like when it comes to money and transportation and the like. I don't know what to do about this. I don't know how to stop fearing abandonment. Some people would say to find people who won't abandon you but people are literally so good at promising one thing in the moment and changing their minds a year down the road.
A friend told me that they basically had a bunch of friends break up with them once they entered residency in med school because they had no time to talk to these friends anymore. These were people who swore up and down they would never leave. These people also believed what they were saying in the moment and weren't lying. But time ultimately turned them into liars. I read a Reddit thread where people who broke bones or were diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness were abandoned by virtually all their friends. This is something that happens to basically everyone.
The time limit for "needing too much" is about one year.
In The Abolitionist's Handbook, Cullors mentions that she lost many friendships from being too involved in the BLM work. It didn't matter if her work literally had implications of the possibility of changing the lives of millions, a friend only cared that she didn't show up and esp that she didn't show up on their birthday. She wrote that in the real world, people don't care. They don't care about your circumstances, only whether you continue to provide the type of interactions they want in a friendship. And that's just the way it is. People owe you nothing and they will never value what you value to the same degree.
There is no prevention for being abandoned. I think that's part of the reason why people try to formalize relationships into cookie cutter things. Besides the economic system that's imposed on us and how marriage is fundamentally about property rights and comes from the long disenfranchisement of women as a concept, I think what's so appealing about it for many is that it presents a ritual of security and literally makes it harder to get up and walk away.
But people do that, anyway. Husbands are statistically more likely to divorce their wives when they're diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness than vice versa.
What do we call that? Do the women that stay actually stay out of love or do they stay because they feel more socially obligated? Do abled people ever really actually care enough to stay around if they have a choice?
Is there anything about me that would prevent someone I rely on from abandoning me? I don't think so.
I think I'd try not to abandon people solely out of principle as opposed to whether I am deriving joy from the interaction because I would feel sorry for not helping someone who is suffering an unfair system. But I don't think I would want other people to stick around for the same reason. I want to feel wanted, and if I can't have that I want people to leave.
But it's also just so scary. I don't think I'll stop fearing this for the rest of my life. Maybe it would be best if someone put me out of my misery before it gets to that point.