The Scar of Abandonment: I Was Never the Problem

There’s a scar I carry that no one can see.

It’s not on my skin — it’s deep in the fabric of who I am. It’s the scar of abandonment. Of being left, over and over again, by the very people who were supposed to love me. Protect me. Stay.

From a young age, I learned to make myself small. Pretty. Quiet. Smart. Anything I could be that might make someone stay.

But they still left.

My mom chose drugs.
My dad chose drugs too.
My ex-husband? Same cycle. Same substances. Same silence that left me sobbing into my pillow night after night, wondering what was so fundamentally wrong with me that no one ever stayed. No one answered my calls. No one checked in on me when I was crying.

I was just a kid, and I thought it had to be me.

That if I had only been better — easier — more lovable — they would’ve stayed.

So now, even though I’m grown and in a different kind of life, when someone I love walks away from an argument… when my husband leaves the room…
I’m not 28 anymore.
I’m 7. I’m 14. I’m 19.
Back in that bed. Alone. Crying.
Begging someone to choose me.

And sometimes I make my way physically there’s too.

It hits like a wave: the old ache, the familiar panic, the lie whispering, You’re the problem. You’re the reason they leave.

But here's the truth — the hard-won, soul-earned truth:

I was never the problem.

I wasn’t manipulative.
I wasn’t too sensitive.
I wasn’t too needy.
I wasn’t too much of anything.

They made choices — heartbreaking, selfish, often addiction-fueled choices — and I was collateral damage. But their inability to love me well… was never about me.

And now, when that old spiral starts to pull me under, I repeat it to myself like a mantra:

🖤 It’s not manipulative to ask for what I need.
🖤 It’s not wrong to want to feel safe and loved.
🖤 It’s not too much to say, “Please don’t walk away.”

If someone can’t meet those needs, that’s okay. But their inability to give what’s sacred to me does not make me unworthy of it. And it’s not my job to carry their refusal to acknowledge the harm they’ve caused.

I’m not here to contort myself to be easier to love.
I’m not here to beg anyone to stay.
I’m here to heal.
To love without abandoning myself.
To name the scars for what they are — and build something sacred in spite of them.

If you know this feeling — if your heart aches reading this because you get it — then I want you to know this:

You were never the problem either.