on abandonment
Two of my earliest memories of abandonment connect to my father. One colored by a drunken outburst and the other by total absence.
As an only child, much of my time was spent with my imagination in my bedroom. I’d fantasize about all the things I could do and all of the places I could see. This one summer I got really into the idea of rollerskating and asked to get a pair. My older cousins would sometimes rollerblade on the block but I’ve always been clumsy, so I was hoping papi could teach me. That I’d get to learn this new fun skill and have something to bond with him over.
TLDR: I waited hours for him and this request turned into a core memory.
He agreed to take me to Dicks Sporting Goods, where we’d pick out the skates and protective gear and he’d spend time teaching me how to find balance, maybe do a little turn or two.
It was common for papi to start disappearing at some point in my childhood. For a night, a few days, sometimes even 2 weeks. And we’d move on like nothing happened.
This was the day he agreed to go buy the skates with me. I waited all day, even slept on his side of the bed with mommy in hopes he’d come to bed and think ‘Oh shit yeah the skates’. I stayed up all night and it wasn’t til like 3am where I really had it sink in…. even if he came home right now we weren’t gonna walk out the house and go buy them. He didn’t keep his promise. He didn’t care that I’ve been waiting.
Eventually he came home. Eventually I convinced him I still wanted the skates. ( re: convincing - my parents and cousins created this narrative that I was a spoiled brat and pushed for what I wanted out of greed when really I just wanted to be seen and for promises/words to be kept). Eventually we made it to Dicks Sporting Goods and practiced a little bit in front of the house.
We went to Flushing Meadows Park for one day to practice. Then he went back to his coming and going. I refused to learn with anyone but him. I put the skates away when school started and by the next summer my feet had grown in size so I no longer fit into the skates he bought me.
I never did learn to roller skate.
As a kid I felt deeply misunderstood, which is not an uncommon sentiment. But with time, learning, and access, I was able to see how the way I react to abandonment is exacerbated tenfold by my CPTSD.
I can look back now and see how that little girl waiting over 24 hours wide awake for a grown ass man to show up and take her to buy roller-skates was an intense reaction. That I fought sleep despite the hours of tears, just wanting him to show up.
This desperation to be chosen and cared for. To be remembered. To be prioritized.
It was never about the roller-skates.
I internalized this feeling of being de-prioritized for much of my life.
Abandonment felt like my fate.
It showed up when friends chose other friends, when my mom skipped my birthday to be in DR with her boyfriend at the time, when papi wouldn’t show up to things, when my first partner cheated on me, when friends never spoke to me again after my big suicide attempt in college, when romantic connections became strangers after things got a little hard, when I had a rupture with a cousin I’d see often, when comrades left our organization completely after interpersonal conflicts, when when when….
I internalized being left so much, I wanted to leave myself.
These feelings turned inward - as self harm of various sorts, as negative self talk, as toxic relational cycles…
Now this feeling of abandonment has returned.
My mother enthusiastically springs onto me a sudden move to Florida with her husband of one year. She’ll be gone by the end of this month.
I am still learning how to tell stories as they are unfolding.
What is mine and what is hers?
But as the main character of this story, I am once again being left.
My partner got these photos developed of our first beach day this summer. The anniversary of my God Brothers passing. We went to the beach with some friends. I spent this anniversary once again without my family of origin. A common occurrence now.
I grieve alone.
Not quite alone as my partner and best friends and newer friends join me.
But I can’t help but think of those not with me during those/these times.
This present day feeling of abandonment is loud.
So loud that I saw these images of a good day and said ‘ew’ to myself and wished not to exist in this physical form.
I couldn’t see the company or care of that day but instead the size of my body. I am averse to photos of myself these days. A friend tries to show me a photo they took on their phone and I make an excuse ‘send them with all of the other photos. I prefer photo hauls’ knowing i’ll skip over the photos Im in. The media’s push of Ozempic, seeing Fat folks un-Fat themselves, seeing companies cut their “additional sizes” options, seeing my friends point out yet another skinny person they’re attracted to…. In this weird way society is abandoning me as a Fat person yet again after some years of inclusivity. Of feeling like my size and look was worth centering and choosing.
My internalized Fatphobia was one of the ways I learned to project the anger and sadness of abandonment further inward. The classic blame game.
My mother’s words when I came out to her echo "you know theres men who like fat girls right?”. How that thought connected backwards to every friend and crush I thought would stay if I weighed XYZ pounds instead.
That previously learned response to abandonment. Wanting to leave myself.
In my first relationship I cried at the idea of us first hugging because I thought I was too big for them to wrap their arms around. I thought if they couldn’t hug me of course they wouldn’t want to be with me and claim me.
I am a child again who cannot speak her mind. Instead she waits hours to see what will happen next.
I then try to remind myself that I am an adult. I have choice. And I have people who choose me. Even if I sometimes am 3rd, 4th, 5th on their list - that there is grounding in the gratitude to end up on said list. That it is okay if I am not 1st or 2nd.
Where do you go when you carry a lifetime of not being someone’s 1st? Seeing your parents chase love and their own truths, which in-between the lines tell you that you are not their love or their truth.
I tell my partner, my best friend, my therapist how the alarms of abandonment are ringing. I feel it underneath my skin. A thought I had at age 5, 15, 25 - how can a body be this big, so much of me and yet none of me wanted?
I know those are cognitive distortions. Self punishment to ease the pain of how others have hurt me. How I have interpreted their leaving.
These days I do not hurt the same. I do not harm my body and do not talk to myself in the nasty ways I used to.
I try to see this moment more as life continuing than abandonment, while also validating my ache.
Because this heart, it really does ache.
I must choose myself first.
Until next time,
In Love, Solidarity and Liberation.
<3 <3 <3