I’ve been trying to write something about self-abandonment for a while now. My therapist laughed when I told her that prior to reaching out to her for the first time I had been thinking I kind of had things figured out.
“Oh well, that’s endearing,” she said, “but there are always more layers.” I can see clearly now how right she is.
The self-abandonment layer is particularly difficult to look at, because I can see now how it’s affected every one of my relationships for so long. After my most recent breakup, I felt particularly gutted—it was like a cumulation of so many losses had finally caught up with me and the weight of them took me down hard. I made it through my days at the bookstore, but then took myself immediately to the forest where I had a tent set up, took off all my clothes and laid there naked and sweating, too depressed to move. I couldn’t even read, a first for me. I just stared out the mesh window at the trees for hours until it got too dark to see. I had broken up with someone (again) because I was losing myself, had been losing myself for decades, and was finally and officially the most lost.
D.W. Winnicott wrote, “It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.” As the weeks and months stretched on, and summer faded, being hidden felt not joyous but rather necessary for my own attempts at repair. But my recurring, pervasive, and existential thought was that no one would ever find me again, least of all me. I had many moments of wishing I could cease to exist for those many weeks: and how much easier that would be than to keep feeling what I was feeling with no clear path through or out. I started taking pictures of myself, all somewhat disturbing with puffy eyes and every part of me sallow and depleted, but it was like I had to make sure I was still real. Ducky next to me, freaked out by my stillness and tears, did her part to keep me here: and it was she who pulled me back from the more dangerous steps of thinking through ways to make my vanishing real. And I had the trees and the owls too. Each night around ten, three of them landed above my tent and talked to each other. I waited for them every time, and every time they came.
Though absolutely terrible at breakups, I’ve always thought I was a pretty good boyfriend, but now I’m much less convinced. Getting along, which I generally find easy to do, is not the same thing as an authentic, intimate connection. I’ve had a lifetime of focusing on the needs of others at the expense of my own, to not speak my truths or of my boundaries because I didn’t want anyone to be disappointed in or mad at me, and because when I did speak up and there was conflict, I didn’t have the fortitude to steady myself for whichever passing storm. Instead, when problems would arise, I assumed fault and felt worse. In a recent interview, memoirist Melissa Febos said, “Other people’s emotions are not an emergency.” It hit me like the slap I needed. I would have liked to receive this slap thirty years ago, but I suppose it’s right on time. My therapist would say so anyways.
Besides the loss of my partner, the loss of the small group of friends I had with her, who I loved and trusted (and not to be underestimated—had so much fun with) was another layer of evisceration. It makes sense she would get these friends: they’ve known each other for decades. I don’t know if it’s because of small town life, a lack of privacy here, my own queerness and feeling regularly pigeonholed and misunderstood, and there not being very many people (or so I thought) who I could love (platonically) or who could love me back (platonically.) I listened to the words of Dr. Musgrove who discussed belonging as an evolutionary need, built into our strands of DNA. The uncertainty of not belonging can permeate our sense of safety, our identity, and our physical health. She said it’s much worse for marginalized groups, and while I don’t usually put myself in that category, it does track. Everything she described was certainly true for me. It doesn’t seem to matter that I intellectually understand I am not as important to these friends as my ex is—that’s just how it goes: but the loss has felt evolutionary, like being rejected in this way, in this moment, would leave me out in the elements to die, and that is exactly how it landed. Also at this time there was a crusading transphobic Christian running around town, and all the horrors of the world were looming large. The wildernesses and wild creatures I still don’t think I can live without were and are under severe attack. I felt unsafe and unmoored, lonely, sad, and very exhausted.
A friend here said that she understood I was experiencing pretty extreme fomo as they went dancing, camping, to parties, to the river, to the city, to shows, to festivals, on roadtrips, to group dinners and beach bonfires and breakfasts and sleepovers: a group still very much intact, minus one. I now carefully avoid the social media of certain people here who I very much like, but there’s really no escape. Small town life doesn’t let you out of the loop. “Ehh…I was not invited…” is a refrain I find myself saying more regularly these days. I didn’t have the words then to articulate that in all of this there was no fear of missing out, it was the reality of being purposely excluded. It was something they talked about together, and decided upon. Looked at from another angle, of course people break up and lose friends all the time. I’m certainly aware that I’m far from the only person to experience this— it is really just a part of living. In the past for me it really hasn’t been the worst thing. But this time, in this era, at this age, in this place, with these people, and for who I am in this moment…it just hit different. It sunk me all the way down.
And throughout this terrible time, when I most needed to love myself, I tried for a moment to give it all away, yet again. It was like my Last Hurrah, a beautiful (and honest) distraction, before letting it all go, and finally starting to settle into the real work that lay before me. Not pretty, and not lighthearted, and not fun. But right. And mine.
Crawling towards fall, my lovely friend Steph sat with me on a riverbank in the central Cascades and reassured me with her own experiences with this kind of decision to leave, and this kind of communal loss, and just all this human pain. “It also has to be okay in our society to break up with someone,” she said plainly, as the river rushed past us and the colors in the leaves shifted. We talked about how, except in instances of abuse, the breaker-upper tends to not get much sympathy regardless of the reasons. She shared with me some personal stories of how even in a huge, gay city doing so could be divisive and alienating. Soon after this, and starting to feel a bit more fortified, I took myself to a tiny concert in Eugene, where Anna Tivel sang her Animal Poem right in front of me: sorry and i’m listening / is a poem that’s always been / beautiful enough to kill the darkness / you can be someone who loves or you can be somebody else / i tell you kid the first one is the hardest. I was starting to find the people and the words I needed.
When the colder weather really started coming, I left town for Oregon’s northeast corner. Alone with not even Ducky for company, I headed with a backpack and too many winter hats, into the Eagle Cap Wilderness, straight uphill for 8 miles and up to 8,000 feet. With no other humans around, I found myself on the edge of a gorgeous, icy lake, surrounded by snow-capped peaks. And I found myself to be very, very small, at last, in all the right ways. Utterly alone, I felt less lonely than I had in a very long time. Ten years? Fifteen? My insignificance, all my puny fears and struggles, sank into the deep, cold lake as I faded into sleep, waking up to find my water bottle frozen solid next to me, but lungs and heart and eyes very clear. That Cat Power song I played on repeat for all my years of college, helped a younger version of me through so many mistakes, and so much loss and learning: When no one is around, love will always love you.
I am finally starting to remember, and remember myself, all my selves really, and am finding the small handful of friends here at the edge of the continent who I might really love and trust and who might really love and trust me back, and what we might do, and how we might live.
Charlie J. Stephens 
Love this, Charlie!