Raspberry Iced M

On the heels of my post about abandonment, I felt it necessary to clarify a few things.

There’s a particular kind of pain associated with feeling disposable.

Like I was useful for a season.
I was important until something changed.
I was wanted until it became inconvenient.

It’s almost as if some people can set me down and keep walking.

That’s a painful feeling, and if I am honest, it touches something old inside me.

Feeling disposable prompts thoughts I probably wouldn’t otherwise have.

They moved on so easily.
I guess I didn’t matter much.
If I were valuable, they’d have stayed.
I was replaceable.

And for a long time, I was thoroughly convinced of all of those things.

What I am learning about myself, though, is that I have all too often accepted feelings as facts.

It hurts because the realization that I have been disposed of by people I love incites fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear that I’ll never be enough. Fear that love will always be predicated on a condition I cannot maintain. And fear that my value depends on being chosen.

So when someone leaves, withdraws, replaces, ignores, or changes, it can feel bigger than the current moment. And sometimes it can feel like confirmation of every insecurity I carried.

But I am not unintelligent. And while I used to equate feelings with facts, now I am trying to be more objective. I have made it my mission to challenge my own emotions. So even though it can be difficult to remember in the middle of fear, the truth is that someone’s choice is not my value. Another person’s decision does not define my worth.

Those who have left me feel 100% justified in doing so. I have made some decisions that have not flattered who I am at my core, and those people confuse that pattern of poor choices with character.

(That’s a post for another day.)

People leave us for lots of reasons. Immaturity. Avoidance. Selfishness. Their inability to sustain connection. Their own wounds. Circumstances their own lives have handed them.

So, yes, it could be that my bad decisions played a part in their choosing to leave. But their own decisions are a reflection on them, too.

The last year or so of my life has been a war. Not a battle – a war with myself and my feelings. Challenging every single one. So when I feel disposable…

1. I name the feeling honestly. Instead of pretending I’m okay, or rushing out to replace the person who cast me aside, I tell myself the truth. I feel discarded. I feel forgotten. I feel replaceable. Naming the wound helps me tend to it.
2. I separate feeling from fact. This is still incredibly challenging for me. But feeling disposable is not proof that I am. So I ask myself: What are the facts here? Did one person choose differently, or am I assigning global meaning to it? Loss trickled down can feel like a verdict, when it is really just one event at a time. And the funny thing is that each loss has made me wiser and more prepared for the next.
3. I stop using one person as the judge of my worth. When someone leaves, I used to hand them entirely too much authority. Their choice became my identity. But I am working on taking back that authority. No one – NO ONE – gets to decide my value anymore.
4. I am rebuilding through action. Worth can seem abstract when we’re hurting. So I have started grounding myself in tangible things. I keep routines. I care for my body by eating whole meals and resting, or even by showering and throwing on clean leggings when I don’t “feel” like it. I do meaningful work – both for pay and voluntarily. I keep commitments to myself (which I haven’t mastered completely, but I try to prioritize three things to accomplish every day). I create things. I have started new traditions. I help other people. Action restores dignity.
5. I notice now where I feel “used” repeatedly. I have realized over the last year or so that feeling disposable points to patterns. Times I gave more than was probably within my capacity. Times when I accepted crumbs on the off chance that gathering enough crumbs would one day equal a whole cookie. Times when I performed or betrayed a core value so that I could “earn” someone’s love or attention or time or affection. Times when I actively chased people who were unavailable. Pain doesn’t have to be wasted. It can become insight if we let it.
6. I choose reciprocal spaces. I go where I am consistently valued – and I’ll be frank – that’s not a lot of places. But I don’t want to be somewhere when I’m convenient. Friendships, communities, my church, my job – I look for places where I am not merely useful, but seen. And when I can’t find places like that, I stay home. I’m always welcome at home.
7. I allow grief to be grief. I am mastering the art of naming my emotions correctly. And feeling like I’m disposable is real. But sometimes it’s grief. Grief that someone mattered to me more than I did to them. That hurts. And grief deserves an honest look, too.
8. I do not chase. To be honest, there is a part of me that still knows that if I don’t reach out first, I’ll be forgotten. And that used to scare me. I rationalized this in my head, over and over – if I wanted to be loved, I needed to be available. And I still think that is mostly true. But I am not the type of person who “half does” anything. It drives me crazy to do 80% of a project and leave the other 20% hanging. So why would I allow that in my relationships? If I’m really that terrible…if I’m not worth inviting or including or talking to…if I am truly only worth someone’s time if I shrink myself into a doormat…I don’t want it. So I let my absence speak for itself. And the truth is that they probably don’t even feel it, and they may be happier without my involvement in their lives. And now I think that’s a good thing. If I have made someone else so miserable that they cannot tolerate me, they deserve peace without me.
9. My boundaries remain intact. Other people are well within their human rights to walk away from me. I no longer try to control that. But when they do, I hope they’re prepared to stand on that decision, because I no longer accept those aforementioned crumbs.
10. I pray. Fervently. I told the Lord last week that I felt so lonely and isolated. And I asked Him if being lonely is a consequence of my bad decisions, or if there’s a reason why I am stuck in this season. He let me know it’s both. Yes, people have walked away from me because I have hurt them. People have also walked away from me because they do not possess the capacity to empathize with someone like me. But more than that, because I am the type of person who does perform for relationships, I have forgotten who I am at my core. He has allowed people to leave for two reasons – one, they are not necessary to complete the purpose He has set for me, and two, He knows I am distracted too easily by the attention I get from other people. He wants me to focus right now. Focus on Him. Focus on myself. Focus on keeping the mask off long enough to know what I need to change/fix. And focus on how every bit of this has become part of a testimony that will help someone else. If He can accept me…if He can transform me…then He can do it for anybody.

So I’m learning that being left does not mean I am worthless. Being replaced does not equal being forgettable. And being misunderstood does not equal being disposable, even if it all seems that way at first glance. Sometimes all of those things just mean that people don’t have the capacity to hold what I give. And that is okay.

If you feel disposable right now, be gentle with yourself. That feeling can be loud. But it’s not who you are. You’re not a jacket someone outgrew. You’re not trash someone threw away. You’re a whole person whose value existed before the relationship(s) you lost. And that value remains now that the relationship(s) are gone.