Abandonment Does Not Erase Your Worth

by Tawnia Lives

Abandonment in a relationship can cut deeply.

Not only because someone leaves.

But because of what happens inside of you afterward.

The questions.

The replaying.

The second-guessing.

The way your mind keeps circling the same memories, looking for something it missed.

Looking for the moment everything changed.

Looking for the answer that will finally make it make sense.

I remember spending years doing that.

Turning conversations over in my head.

Replaying moments I couldn’t change.

Wondering if I had been too much.

Wondering if I hadn’t been enough.

Wondering why I couldn’t seem to let it go when other people acted like I should have been over it by now.

What I didn’t understand then was that I wasn’t struggling because I was weak.

I was struggling because I was hurt.

There is a difference.

But when abandonment gets inside of you, it can be difficult to tell the difference.

It can make you feel embarrassed by your pain.

Embarrassed by how much you cared.

Embarrassed that you still think about it.

Embarrassed that something that happened months or years ago can still make your chest tighten when you remember it.

It can make you wonder if everyone else knows something you don’t.

If everyone else can move on and you’re the only one still carrying it.

You’re not.

I think one of the hardest parts of abandonment is that it often leaves us alone with questions that have no real answers.

Why did they leave?

Why wasn’t I enough?

What did they see in someone else that they didn’t see in me?

And because those questions hurt, we start trying to answer them ourselves.

Usually in the most painful way possible.

By turning someone else’s choice into evidence against ourselves.

I did that for years.

Not because it was true.

Because I didn’t know what else to do with the pain.

Looking back now, I can see that I spent so much time trying to understand why someone left that I never stopped to question the story I was telling myself about it.

The story that said their leaving meant something about my worth.

The story that said being chosen and being valuable were the same thing.

The story that said if I had been enough, things would have turned out differently.

I don’t believe those things anymore.

Not because life became easier.

Not because abandonment stopped hurting.

But because eventually I could see the difference between loss and worth.

The loss was real.

The grief was real.

The disappointment was real.

But the conclusion I drew from it was not.

Someone leaving did not make me less.

Someone choosing differently did not make me less.

Someone failing to see my value did not erase it.

For a long time, I thought abandonment was the wound.

Now I think the deeper wound was believing it meant something about who I was.

And healing began when I finally stopped treating someone else’s choice as evidence against myself.

Not overnight.

Not all at once.

But little by little.

Question by question.

Story by story.

Until eventually I could look back and see what I couldn’t see then.

I was never weak for hurting.

I was never foolish for hoping.

And I was never less because someone walked away.

WHAT I LEARNED

For years, I thought my pain meant there was something wrong with me.

Looking back, I think it meant there was something that needed understanding.

Abandonment creates questions.

Shame creates conclusions.

The questions are worth exploring.

The conclusions often are not.

HOW TO PRACTICE IT

The next time you find yourself replaying the past, notice the story attached to it.

Are you remembering what happened?

Or are you using what happened as evidence against yourself?

There is a difference.

And that difference matters.

CORE TRUTH

Someone else’s choice may explain what happened.

It does not define who you are.

— Tawnia Lives

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