When Abandonment Wounds Are Your Teacher
There comes a point when you have to act like the person who left you will never come back. It’s essential to accept it in order to seek healing.
But at some point, you must also ask yourself that if they do return, whether you’ll take them back. That’ll tell you if you’re healing or are just resigned.
If your answer is no, maybe there’s still anger and where there’s anger, there is pain & unhealed wounds. What’s the point is saying no when you still want? That’s only revenge & it’s neither loving nor healing. It hurts you the most in the long run.
If your answer is yes, there’s a part of you that still wants them & you’re only lying to yourself by calling it acceptance. I’m sorry but this will hurt you much more in the long run.
Abandonment is a sharp knife but pretending it didn’t happen is letting it rust in your wounds. Resignation feels like defeat because it is. Acceptance doesn’t defeat you.
You can be weakened & still not lose your spirit if you remember that neither disappointment nor achievement define you. These are things that you feel about things outside of yourself; they are not you.
So what is the right answer to whether you’ll take them back if they return? I guess there isn’t. You can’t hasten healing by predicting it. When they say love heals, they mean the act of loving – the light it shines into your corners, even your dark places of painful shame. Your beloved & their actions have nothing to do with this. They are but the ink on the pages of your learning.
If love is a lesson in attachment, it must also be a lesson in detachment. What does the act of loving teach you that the state of possession does not?
One of the great lessons of my life, that I learned 5 years too late really, is that waiting for the leaver to come back is a bad idea. Much better to simply move on. Not replace, or rebound, simply start anew.
@Topher: Learning that now. Better late than never.