Alas…
There are some wounds that don’t just “heal” and disappear. They weave themselves into how we love, how we trust (or don’t), how we speak, how we brace for impact every time we let someone close.
For me, it’s abandonment.
Not always the obvious kind. Sometimes it’s not people physically leaving. It’s people staying in your life but being emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, vague, and confusing. It’s promises that never fully materialize. It’s the slow, quiet realization:
“I am living with chronic disappointment, and I’m being asked to call this love.”
Tonight, that realization hit me again, like it always does: sudden, heavy, and somehow painfully familiar.
The Ugly Side of Healing
People talk about healing like it’s this peaceful, soft, spiritual process. Candles, journaling, yoga, therapy, affirmations.
No one glamorizes the part where you’re sitting alone at night, replaying conversations, feeling your chest tighten because you finally admit:
- That relationship hurt me more than I wanted to admit.
- I felt unseen.
- I felt misunderstood.
- I felt like I was showing up with my entire soul, and somehow it still wasn’t enough—or it was misread.
In my last relationship, I truly believed he knew my soul. I thought he could feel I was learning, growing, trying so hard to be honest and fucking authentic with him. I wasn’t faking who I was. I was there, raw, real, willing.
But he couldn’t really meet me.
He spoke in half-answers, vague statements, implied meanings. Compared me to others. Would disrespect me during arguments and I would call it out and always allow it. I needed clarity. I needed complete fucking sentences. I needed someone who didn’t make me feel like I was asking too much for wanting emotional comprehension and depth. The more I felt understood by him, the more I actually felt supported. But I often felt judged instead. Or that he felt he was superior to me.
Instead, I found myself explaining myself over and over to a man I thought got me. And that confusion , no, that exhaustion of trying to translate your feelings to someone who should already know your heart – that’s a special kind of hurt.being told he felt we had never had the chance to be friends was hurtful because I would had never gone as far into knowing him or giving him access if he really felt that way.
And underneath that hurt was the old wound:
“I will continually meet someone who cannot meet my needs.”
Chronic Disappointment as a Lesson
One of the hardest truths I’ve had to face is this:
Sometimes healing isn’t about finally meeting the perfect person who never lets you down.
Sometimes healing is learning how to live with the reality that people will disappoint you and still you must learn to love anyway, without abandoning yourself.
That doesn’t mean tolerating anything and everything. It doesn’t mean excusing shitty behavior. It means accepting that no one, not even the kindest person, will love you exactly the way your wounds wish they would.
The lesson is brutal:
- People will fail me.
- I will fail people.
- Love is not the absence of disappointment; it’s how we move with it.
But when you carry abandonment wounds, disappointment doesn’t feel mild. It feels like a confirmation: “See? You were never safe. You were never chosen. Here we are again.”
When Old Wounds Meet New
This isn’t just about my past relationship. It’s about friendships.
It’s about my current one too. Or future.
Because the truth is: my patterns didn’t vanish just because I moved forward with my healing journey. They traveled with me. They’re here, sitting on the bed with me while I text him. They’re in my throat when I try to calmly say, “I need this,” to a friend and my nervous system screams, “Don’t say too much or you’ll be abandoned.”
Recently, I’ve started feeling those familiar cracks again:
- I mentioned taking a break from a few areas in my life. Stepped away from a job, etc.
- I tried to bring up the things that were weighing on me.
- I tried to discuss what wasn’t sitting right in my body.
And that same old feeling washed over me—the letdown, the emotional drop, the quiet knowing of: “Here I am again, hoping someone will fully hold me, and feeling like they can’t.”
He cares in the ways that are easy for him:
He shows up with money. He pays. He provides. He rearranged his plans tonight for me. And I see that effort. I don’t want to be ungrateful for it.
Money is safe for him. It’s concrete. It’s simple.
Emotionally caring for me? Holding my heart with consistency, depth, and clarity? That’s a different kind of work. And if I’m honest, I don’t fully trust his work there yet.
The Moment I Realized: I’m Triggered, But I’m Not Wrong
Tonight, in the middle of feeling all of this, I had to admit two things at once:
- I am triggered.
Something in what’s happening now is waking up a past event, a past pain. It’s not all about him; some of it is my history crying out. - And I am also not crazy for wanting what I want.
I am not asking for too much because I want emotional clarity, genuine effort, and the feeling of being emotionally held—not just financially supported.
Healing for me tonight looks like sitting in that tension:
- Not gaslighting myself and calling myself “dramatic.”
- Not villainizing him completely and pretending he’s pure evil.
- Not pretending his efforts don’t exist.
- But also not pretending his efforts are enough for what I actually need.
I’m recognizing:
This moment is activating an old story in me.
Instead of spiraling outward, I’m turning inward and saying, “Okay. I’m triggered. I see why. Let me work through this in me first.”
That doesn’t mean I accept crumbs. It just means in this moment, I’m not going to abandon myself OR demand that he suddenly become the healer of all my wounds.
Learning to Love Without Abandoning Myself
This is the cruel paradox of healing abandonment:
- You’re learning to trust people while knowing they will fail you.
- You’re learning to open your heart while knowing it may not be held the way you dream it will.
- You’re learning to choose yourself without completely shutting everyone else out.
I’m trying to learn how to:
- Love others without lying to myself about their capacity.
- Accept what someone genuinely offers, while also being honest about where it doesn’t touch the places I ache the most.
- Stop hoping that one person will finally behave so perfectly that my abandonment wound evaporates.
Because the truth is, even if I met the most emotionally available, attuned, communicative person in the world, my wound would still be my wound. They could support my healing, but they couldn’t do it for me.
Tonight, Healing Looks Like This
Tonight, healing doesn’t look pretty.
It looks like:
- Sitting in my feelings and letting them be ugly, loud, and messy.
- Admitting how deeply my last relationship hurt me in ways I didn’t fully say out loud.
- Acknowledging that my current relationship is brushing up against the same wound.
- Seeing the ways he does care—like changing his plans, like providing materially—without letting that gaslight me out of my deeper needs.
- Choosing not to run, not to explode, but to actually work through it in me.
It looks like saying:
“I love people who sometimes can’t meet my needs.
I can still love them, and also tell myself the truth about that.”
It looks like choosing, over and over:
- I will not abandon myself to avoid being abandoned.
- I will not silence my needs just to keep the peace.
- I will not pretend I’m healed just because I’m tired of hurting.
It’s the one thing I’ve been incredibly forthcoming in. My healing and my heart. And I think right now, my inner child is being fiercely protected.
Healing Isn’t Linear, But I Am Still Moving
I remind myself: healing isn’t linear.
Some nights, I feel powerful and self-aware. Other nights, like tonight, I feel small, triggered, and exhausted.
But here’s what’s different now:
- I see the pattern.
- I name the wound.
- I notice when I’m triggered instead of letting it run me from the shadows.
That alone is progress.
No, I don’t fully trust this man’s emotional work yet. I think he has a lot more to learn as do I. And
Yes, I’m triggered by echoes of my past.
And still, I’m here, holding myself, telling the truth, and choosing not to abandon the parts of me that are scared, needy, or vulnerable.
Healing abandonment isn’t a glow-up. It’s a slow, gritty honoring of yourself in the very moments you feel most at risk of being left behind.
Tonight, I’m not healed.
But I am aware.
And maybe, for where I come from, that’s a kind of miracle.
Swipe Left On Perfection 
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