Almost everyone I know has experienced some type of personal loss or abandonment in their life. Not the kind of loss one feels when a loved one passes away, but instead the arguably more complicated and, in some cases, more painful loss in which someone who was once a staple of your life either removes themselves or circumstances take them away from you. It’s a sad fact of life that not every friend you meet is meant to stay in your life, and that sometimes people eventually grow apart. However, when this happens repeatedly or with significant loved ones in someone’s life, as it has with mine, it often strongly affects one’s relationships that still exist.
I am a person with an absent parent. When I was 14, two once-stable parents became one and I was left feeling shell shocked and lost. How is a child supposed to cope when the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally decides to leave your family and all your memories behind? I began to form many co-dependency and trust issues and I still grapple with these problems every single day.
I have always been a fiercely loyal person. When I care about a loved one, I will do anything for that person. However, in the difficult social realms of high school and college, not everyone feels the same way. It is extremely difficult to be a person who values strong relationships in a social setting that is essentially designed to revolve around alcohol and one-night-stands. Even though I am in my second year of college, I am still trying as much as I can to form and maintain meaningful friendships, despite the prominent frat party social scene.
The downside to this is that when friends or significant others leave, I’m left feeling decimated. Because I’ve experienced so much loss in my life already, when someone exits my life it triggers a much stronger reaction in me than in many others. It takes me a very long time to mourn the loss of a relationship with a person, be it a friend or otherwise. It’s sometimes difficult for me to remember that not everyone places the same value on their own social interactions, so it can be hurtful when someone doesn’t return the loyalty I so freely give.
Although this is sometimes an awkward or difficult thing to talk about, it’s a topic that needs to be more frequently discussed in college social life settings. How can we create lasting and important relationships with others when the majority of the time we spend meeting new people is under chemical influence? How can we best learn to make strong connections and value one another, especially when in just a few short years we are supposed to create our own career paths?
As a person with abandonment “issues,” I hope to spend these next three years of college building my own personal strength and self-reliance, while at the same time not be afraid of forming relationships with others due to the possibility that not everyone I meet will stay in my life.
