Abandoned.

Not banished.

Or sentenced to solitary confinement.

Just left alone when you are in your greatest hour of need.

Empty inside. Miles separating you from the world around you.

Abandoned.

It’s a cold, lonely word. It suits the condition it describes quite well. You’re left to deal with reality on your own. The person, people, things that you trusted have all but evaporated. They didn’t storm out, or even announce their departure. You open your eyes, and they are just not there.

And so you sit in desolation, a wasteland around you. Not knowing where to turn. Whether to scream, or cry and so you sadly sit there, huddled in a ball, trying to breathe, trying not to think, trying to sleep until it doesn’t hurt any longer. You feel hopeless, betrayed, neglected…you feel…abandoned.

Deep down you know it isn’t fair; it isn’t right. You know it doesn’t really define you. But you won’t let yourself believe all that. Your mind needs it all to make rational, logical sense. You won’t admit how you feel. That would just make you weird or weak on top of everything else. And you don’t need to feel worse about yourself.

So you just pack it down inside of you and force a brave smile. Longing for the day when you grow numb and possibly don’t even remember how this felt. Questions bubble up in your head, but your mouth pops them before they make it out.  It’s hard for you to trust. To feel stable. To depend on others. To let them in. Isolation is the offspring of abandonment.

It’s also hard to keep things in perspective. To seek the lessons you are supposed to learn from all this. To positively respond to it. To make good out of it.

Abandoned.

That’s the word I’ve been searching for, the internal condition I’ve been trying to describe. For a while now, I have been calling my wound a need for affirmation. While that’s true, I needed to peel back the onion one more layer. The need for affirmation… What is that and where is it coming from? In my case, I’ve just realized, it’s abandonment. Just the sound of that word in the air is like a live grenade for me right now. It shakes me at my core, exploding through walls that have been in place forever, exposing a core challenge I never really knew was dwelling beneath the surface.

There have been several times in my life since childhood when I’ve felt abandoned. Not physically. But emotionally. And spiritually. Those wounds have festered for the longest time. And they have left an ugly, decimated legacy.

I read this quote last week on a site (abandoned.ru) that features photographs of abandoned buildings and thought it was both fascinating and poetic:

Future is waiting for us. With hollow skeletons
or downsized ugly creatures with bulgy eyes – it’s not important.
Important thing is that there will be a footprint left.
Footprint of civilization. Cement, metal and dust not claimed by anyone.

They are eternity.

The site’s author goes on to say that,”We’re not that different from abandoned things. The Abandoned have some sort of a strong and complicated connection with our souls; some people get scared and try to escape their impressions, some fight with them and try to destroy or rebuild or just leave their own footprint on the abandoned site to prove that they’re stronger than this world. And some do not try to do anything – they just look and listen to the Abandoned, enjoying those impressions, feeling the real meaning of time. I am one of them.”

I’ve been abandoned. We all have at some point in our lives. Some of us get scared and try to escape the memories or the feelings. Some fight and try to prove they are strong enough to power through it. And some don’t do anything at all. In denial, they just smile and admire the view.

I’ve become overly positive about my past pains recently. I’ve become slightly obsessed with finally laying it all at the feet of my God and having Him guide me on how to best use it for good. How to heal myself. How to help others. How to build a healthier relationship with Him. How to turn my abandonment from an eyesore or a statue of a failed and broken man into a monument of redemption and a signpost for the path forward.

Abandoned.

A word I won’t mind leaving behind.

They are eternity.