Does the feeling of abandonment ever get better? There are multiple occasions a day when I feel the good old feeling of being left alone. Someone didn´t reply to my message? You are alone. Someone couldn´t find the time to dedicate to me or my needs? You are alone. You felt something good and now it´s gone? That´s because you are utterly, eternally, endlessly alone. It´s lurking in the darkness of my mind, waiting for the right time, and the right time comes almost every time a minor inconvenience happens (minor inconvenience = a huge disaster to a CPTSD folk). At that very moment I´m drawn back to the past, to the childhood I never really left mentally and emotionally. Painful emptiness and stone cold vacuum fills my body and the space around me. I´m experiencing anxiety and deep sorrow. I´ve never been loved and I´ll never be - this is the message it´s carrying. No matter how many people tell me the opposite, my childhood´s got it right. My mother´s got it right.
Gabor Maté, my hero and number one role model talks about this a lot. He himself was abandoned as a baby by his mother, who gave him to a stranger on the street to save his life that was threatened every day in nazi Hungary as a Jew. Despite being reunited with his mother after six weeks and living after in a loving and safe environment, he says he never fully recovered from this trauma of early abandonment. He was a baby who then got the chance to live a meaningful life with people he loves and he himself became someone who saved the lives of thousands of people as a doctor and a humanist. And yet, he never fully recovered. This deep are the childhood wounds.
So I´m sitting here thinking: Will I ever recover? Can someone fill the aching void that was supposed to be filled with unconditional love? If someone experiencing a short term abandonment can´t fully recover, can I, dealing with abandonment my whole childhood, get better? I´ve spent my whole life being absolutely sure that I´m all alone. I remember sitting on a bench in the park, waiting for the school bus, listening to the sound of the birds and distant chatters, and feeling that I´m alone in a world that forgot about me. There are people but I can´t reach them and neither can they. Abandonment became my second nature, my loyal companion. Things may change in the future, but the childhood scars are stronger than any bond in the world.
No matter what I do, this is embedded in my mind and soul. I can´t tear it out and throw it away. That´s just not how it works. I was a child who never once heard ´I love you´, who never once felt that she´s important and that it would be sad if she didn´t exist. Instead, she was abused and neglected, again and again, being used as a tool that had to be useful, otherwise it wouldn´t be needed anymore. I learned that I´m not precious and that love doesn´t come unconditionally. I´m worthy of stuff only if I can provide something in return. I have to be smart, kind, quiet and easy to manage. But love, unfortunately, didn´t follow and it took me almost thirty years to understand that it was never about me. But knowing something rationally and being able to act upon it, are two very different things. And my body and my soul remember everything. They feel the pain of the newborn that was emotionally left alone, they remember the tears of desperation of the ten year old writing a letter to her mother, asking why she never loved her. I remember everything. The question is: can I remember and heal at the same time?
Gabor Maté, my hero and number one role model talks about this a lot. He himself was abandoned as a baby by his mother, who gave him to a stranger on the street to save his life that was threatened every day in nazi Hungary as a Jew. Despite being reunited with his mother after six weeks and living after in a loving and safe environment, he says he never fully recovered from this trauma of early abandonment. He was a baby who then got the chance to live a meaningful life with people he loves and he himself became someone who saved the lives of thousands of people as a doctor and a humanist. And yet, he never fully recovered. This deep are the childhood wounds.
So I´m sitting here thinking: Will I ever recover? Can someone fill the aching void that was supposed to be filled with unconditional love? If someone experiencing a short term abandonment can´t fully recover, can I, dealing with abandonment my whole childhood, get better? I´ve spent my whole life being absolutely sure that I´m all alone. I remember sitting on a bench in the park, waiting for the school bus, listening to the sound of the birds and distant chatters, and feeling that I´m alone in a world that forgot about me. There are people but I can´t reach them and neither can they. Abandonment became my second nature, my loyal companion. Things may change in the future, but the childhood scars are stronger than any bond in the world.
No matter what I do, this is embedded in my mind and soul. I can´t tear it out and throw it away. That´s just not how it works. I was a child who never once heard ´I love you´, who never once felt that she´s important and that it would be sad if she didn´t exist. Instead, she was abused and neglected, again and again, being used as a tool that had to be useful, otherwise it wouldn´t be needed anymore. I learned that I´m not precious and that love doesn´t come unconditionally. I´m worthy of stuff only if I can provide something in return. I have to be smart, kind, quiet and easy to manage. But love, unfortunately, didn´t follow and it took me almost thirty years to understand that it was never about me. But knowing something rationally and being able to act upon it, are two very different things. And my body and my soul remember everything. They feel the pain of the newborn that was emotionally left alone, they remember the tears of desperation of the ten year old writing a letter to her mother, asking why she never loved her. I remember everything. The question is: can I remember and heal at the same time?
I can 100% relate. When I start to daydream more and more often ans space out more and more often, that´s when I know that I´m stressed and overwhelmed. It´s a very good indicator actually that something´s off, at least for me. Our mind/body system is very clever, it´s trying to help us to cope and gives us signals, we just need to listen and connect the dots, which you are already doing in my opinion.