Abandonment Issues

I am often found of saying, “You can’t let one fraction of your life define the rest of your life.” In spite of truly believing this statement sometimes it is very hard to follow. I have a lot of abandonment issues that stem from my childhood, justifiable so. My first memory of actual abandonment occurred when I was just four years old. I was grocery shopping with my mother at the local store, and I got separated from her. I wonder up and down each aisle for quite a time, and could not locate her. Eventually I panicked and started asking people, “Do you know where my mother is?” Of course this alerted the store managers, and after a finite time it was assured that my mother had left me at the store.

I don’t think she left me on purpose, she just forgot that I was with her. Just like she would forget that I was her daughter and not a female competitor for the affections of her husband. Even though my mother abandoned me at the store I was strangely calm. They asked me how to reach my mother, and I did not know my own phone number but I did know the phone number of my grandparents, who were promptly called and they came to retrieve me. Now this isolated incident is not enough to make one struggle with abandonment issue but it was just the start to the pattern of my life.

I always knew in my childhood if my parents were scheduled to pick me up after dance class that I was going to be forgotten. The pattern was always a little different, so I could not plan ahead. The most frequent is that I would wait in the dark and cold after class for an hour until they recalled that they were suppose to pick me up. However often times I would call after hours of waiting in the dark only to find them at home, and know that I had been truly forgotten. It was always an extreme shock when I walked out of dance class to find my parents waiting for me.