It is in our nature to want to feel connected to other people. The drive is so big from the time we are born. We seek out the gaze of adults in the room with milky watery eyes. Tiny hands reaching to grasp another. Our brains are chemically stimulated by electric impulses when we make connection creating pathways of reward. It could be said that the need is as compulsory as the need to eat or drink. It makes sense that the opposite, or the loss of connection. can be devastating. It creates a fear and determination to hold on to another person or people so primal we will do almost anything to maintain it. Other creatures in the animal kingdom don’t share that same motivation. Many are solitary and function better that way. Humans see solitude as an oddity but can also use it as a form of punishment to banish someone from their community. As it relates to Codependency, I’d like to consider what it means to abandon ourselves for connection. How are far are we willing to go to maintain connections while letting go of the parts of ourselves suffer?
I have talked about the connections we have with the family we are born to and the relationships we have with other people in a romantic way. I have briefly talked about connections with friends and people we work with. There are also more tangential connections we have with people in the communities we live in, worship in and learn in. The concentric circles growing further and further out of groups we belong to. There are rules and expectations of behavior and beliefs that regulate the belonging. Some overt and some suggested. What we can neglect to see is the choice we have as adults anyway to participate. Children have less autonomy over such things. I think about how people, once part of a group, work to sustain the being part of collective. We want to belong. We want to feel seen and have our presence be validated. Even the most introverted of us still wants to know they are part of something larger than themselves.
The idea of Codependency takes into account what we are doing to in an extra way to stay connected with others. Often times, we are willing to take on extra things or agree to do stuff that we might not really want to do but it helps keep the peace and therefore the connection. The fear is that we can be abandoned. We can be left behind as people move on. We are so motivated by the anxiety that comes from this idea that we will do lots of things to avoid it. The feeling of not being included in someone’s life or being part of something can keep us confined to what is familiar. There are a few parts of abandonment that compel us to do whatever is necessary to feel connected. The abandonment wound can come from multiple sources and often happens before we are aware of the lasting impact of it.
The injury of abandonment takes root in the heart. It leave a jagged edge. Healing from it takes longer than you expect. I know, for me, it calcified and created some unhelpful beliefs about love. I held onto the idea that people leave and what remains is a sad empty space. I let the injury stay uncleaned and it grew, rotting from within. The space got tender and hot. Infected with the belief that I wasn’t enough to stick around for. I already had the thoughts about not feeling worthy of love. The fact that people could just go away made that worse. I gathered all those feelings and kept them in a box in the back of my head. I longed for connecting to recreate the sense of wholeness in vacated space. But I was also fearful that if I allowed myself to love again the scab over the space would be reinjured.
My dad died when I was 16. He was there and then he was gone. I can still remember when the space in my heart was ripped open and all the dad feelings were evicted. The tenant lived there went to work in the morning and didn’t come back. It took years to pack it up in boxes and trash bags. I lost my first boyfriend Jeremy a few years later. The empty spaces where they lived stood barren like condemned houses in a not so great neighborhood. Windows boarded up. The people who came into the neighborhood moved into the houses around the area but didn’t stay long as the property value went down with the eyesore of those vacant houses. Weeds took over the once tended yards. The elements stripped the paint and rotted the frame and foundation.
My 16-year-old self didn’t have the skills to manage the properties. I let them become condemned. Over the years I would go back to the two spaces and reminisce about what used to occupy them. I could feel the ghosts of the former inhabitants’ brush past me. It was as though the memories were projected on the delipidated walls. The smells of breakfasts on Sunday faintly filled the air. I could hear the tinny sounds of oldies on an 80’s boom box playing in the garage. I’d fall asleep on the broken-down couch dreaming of a new couple talking under the willow tree that stood in the front lawn. The desire to feel those two humans specifically was such a strong pull. I held on so tightly and wanted to avoid that pain at the same time. The scar continued to grow over the gashes.
The unhealthy coping with those losses looked like bumping up against what could have been love and then holding myself back. It became a fascination with choosing people who resembled my distant dad and alcoholic teenage boyfriend. I did all the things I knew to try to fix them. I was accepting the bare minimum of attention and engagement. I let the roots of fear and undeserving grow into a warped tree diseased with branches. I believed that this was all I could expect of love from men. I shut down the boxes that held the potential for anything real or possible. I once wanted to have something real and now I didn’t think it was a possibility for me. I was going to have empty connections even though I poured myself into broken distant men. I never wanted them to feel the devastating loss that I knew would happen if I would walk away from them. So, I stayed in the relationships long past the expiration date.
I told myself those stories on repeat long after I was old enough to fix the houses. I would eventually gut the houses and rebuild. I replaced the warped studs and bowed floorboards. I put in new drywall and replaced the electric. I added new plumbing and replanted flowers in the boxes outside. New people moved in. They did a better job of keeping up the maintenance of the houses, but they were only renters. Over and over the houses feel into disrepair. There were long term renters, short term tenants and lots of overnight guests. Like any rented space, people don’t invest the time to manage the area with the same intention as someone who owns house. I am the owner and it’s my job of tend to the property. I had to decide whether to tear them down and rebuild or turn them into the graveyard they covered up.
I am learning how to fix up these empty spaces. I know that the bones of these love houses are good. I know today that there was love there to begin with. They were built with it. I know that even in the face of the losses, I am capable of love. I am capable of giving and receiving love. I can put that love back into the dilapidated old buildings and create something new. I know that because I continue to fill the neighborhood with new buildings, new houses where love exists. I know that my dad and Jeremy didn’t leave me, they just left. Their time in my story was done. They left a space but also memories of how I was seen and attended to. I don’t have to tear down the whole things to start over, I can mend what was left behind and create a new place for love to grow. There was a time when I wanted to burn them to the ground. I wanted to pave over them and forget they were ever here. Today, I don’t feel that way. I want to honor the memories of the two men who once existed and loved me. I want to remember that I had true connections with these two souls. They taught me things and spent good time with me that wasn’t just about them leaving.
I am working on it daily. I try to check my facts about what I know to be true. I look for the people who show up consistently. I try to recognize that I have had people in my life who love me without trying. I think about my friendships and relationship with other people. I value the folks who seek me out and check in with me regularly. I invest time in those relationships that add joy and meaning to my life. I recognize today that everything changes and sometimes people leave. I take the opportunity to hold space for the grief but not grip onto it as tightly as I used to making the sadness part of my personality. I still think about the two houses. I can drive by them and think of the good times and sweet memories without hurting like I once did. I can see new life in them someday. No one can replace these two people, these two significant men who happened to leave. They are part of the story of how I learned to love but not the only story. I have lived longer now without them both than I ever had them in my life. I survived the loss. I love more now than I thought I was capable of.
I have a sense of belonging both to things bigger than myself and also to myself. I am working on not abandoning myself and my needs. I am making strides at shifting my expectation from very low and accepting the minimum to more of what I need in the moment. I continue working on detaching from any inevitable outcome to just being in the moment. I don’t have to have all the things figured out, I can be receiving in the moment of what people are offering or not. I am learning that I can have needs and if I am not getting them met, I can walk away. I am not abandoning anyone I am just not staying in something that doesn’t serve me. I don’t have to stay. I don’t owe anything to anyone but myself. I am worth effort, time and energy. I have people in my life who are willing to give these things freely and I don’t have to do extra things or give up parts of myself to receive them.
Things to consider:
Where in your story did you feel abandoned?
What were the unhelpful beliefs that you created because of those losses?
How did you cope with those hard feelings?
What parts of yourself have you abandoned to be part of relationships or groups?
How can you shift the beliefs with facts about what is actually true in your story today?
How are you willing to show up for yourself now to create connectedness?