Episode 48: Abandonment

Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 48th episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I was going to talk about today. And I feel as if many of my episodes have been providing some context into my life and sharing what I share, maybe to help somebody else. But most importantly, it helps. I guess it helps put things in perspective for me. And more importantly, it allows me to tell my story without having to justify my perspective and my perception of what happened. What happened to me what I did to myself, sometimes, and this may be just me, I don’t think I’m alone on this. But sometimes when we tell somebody else how we feel, there is this initial reaction to state our opinion, or they want to state their opinion. So if I say to somebody, this is how you made me feel, or this is how I felt when this happened. Because you’re in a conversation, the other person is going to say, well, that’s not how I remember it, or that’s not how I saw it, or I hear you, and then you have another conversation about it. But I think that there is something very powerful about being able to say what you want to say, from that scar, not wound perspective, without having to go any further other than what you have to say, which is why people find writing in journals. So cathartic, when you write in a journal, it’s your thoughts and yours alone, and you’re gonna read it or maybe you’ll read it out loud. Or maybe you’ll share it. But at no point can somebody respond to you in a journal. And similarly to this podcast, nobody can respond to me until it’s aired a week later, after I might record it or even a few days later. And they don’t, they don’t have the ability to, I want to say it’s invalidate the way I’m feeling. Because this is the way I’m feeling. And this is the clarity that I have right now. And this is what I want to share. And this is how I remember it. So for today’s topic, I thought, you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about even maybe how I got here, I’m not going to start from the very, very beginning. But I do want to provide a little bit of context. And as you can see by the title, the title is abandonment. And there’s something I want to say about the feeling of abandonment. Because I think we all feel that way, we all get scared as little kids that we’re going to be left. Or maybe somebody’s going to leave us as we get older. And we’re in our first relationship with a partner, somebody Gen unless you’re you know, a I don’t know if there are high school sweethearts, and they end up together. But generally speaking, you either do the leaving, or you get left. And when you get left there is this horrible feeling of abandonment. So let’s, for me, let me talk a little bit about what that feels like and why it’s so important to helping me get to where I am today. So if I were to go way, way, way back, you know, my father died when I was seven years old, died of a heart attack Memorial Day weekend. And from that point, which I’ll call this defining moment in my life from that point, the people in my family like my mother and my sister, and I know how much they loved me. They probably didn’t know quite what to do with this seven year old little girl who had just lost her father, not keeping in mind my sister was 10 but had this burden of being the older sister. So she probably felt this responsibility of protecting me. And this, this thing that happened was that I felt Maybe I didn’t feel it. But maybe this narrative that I was abandoned was sort of stuck in my head. I don’t remember feeling abandoned, I remember feeling protected. And I remember feeling okay, this is the reality he’s dead. And I guess that’s that. I mean, I don’t think I was that deep at seven years old. But that’s how I remember it. But what I also remember was as time went on my relationships with my girlfriends, and then most importantly, my relationships with my first boyfriend, and I’m not gonna call it a really a relationship, it is what it is, you know, you got a guy who likes you, you’re flattered. You want to be the popular kid in school. And, you know, that happens, or that doesn’t happen. But the reality is that, you know, you’re 1314, even 15 years old, and, you know, people are exploring their relationships. And when a guy would break up with me, it felt like a punch in the gut. What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I good enough, what was better about her, whoever that might have been, and not okay with me. And then there are other people that wanted me to stay with them. And I would do the leaving, I would be the one abandoning them. So I get it, you know, it’s a push pull kind of thing. And we we have it happened to us, and everybody gets to heartbroken and everybody breaks another person’s heart. So I remember feeling super sad. When ever somebody didn’t maybe like me the way I like them. And maybe I did a little dance in my head about it. But if they broke up with me, I felt really abandoned. And I would do anything in my power to avoid feeling that sadness as I would go into the next relationship and the next relationship. So in college, I had a guy who, and he’ll have a very different memory of this, but he didn’t treat me well. He threw me against a wall and picked up a mattress and threw me against the wall with me sandwiched between the wall and the mattress. He tried to do things that manipulated me, so he could get what he needed from the relationship. If you were to ask him, and he’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, he was young, and didn’t really understand probably what was happening in our relationship. Nevertheless, he was very popular, and a lot of girls in college wanted this guy, and this guy wanted me. And the idea of him leaving me was so awful for me, that I put up with a lot in order to stay in this relationship. And I am really sorry that I did that. And I do remember, at the time that I ended it for good. He was shocked, he was shocked that I ended the relationship. I said, I’m not in love with you anymore. I would rather spend the rest of my life alone, then one more minute with you. And he walked away. And I felt very empowered that day, because I really meant that. So when I guess it was maybe even a year later, I met my husband. And I thought, well, I guess I didn’t have to spend too much time alone

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for the rest of my life. And then I got married. And I was super happy for a very long time until I wasn’t and I’m not quite sure what happened. For me at that time, I’m going to say that something was missing, I did the work that I had to do. But it wasn’t enough because my husband didn’t probably think that he had any role or responsibility in making it work, like couples counseling or whatever. And so he didn’t join me in that venture. But I kept getting the help that I needed. Now, I also was a young mother. And there was something that happened that the only thing I can describe it as was you know, postpartum depression. And it it started very, very early after the birth of my second child and I was just not okay. My life was not okay. And I was not okay. And I probably not probably I have to admit this, I abandoned my family. I Emotionally, I abandoned myself, but I abandoned my family, which meant I abandoned my kids and my kids are going to have a reality. Very, you know, whatever reality they have should say it like this. Whatever reality they have is the reality they have and if they want to come on this podcast and they want to share about their reality, they are more than welcome to do so. If I can only speak from the perspective of how I felt, I know I abandoned them, I know that I did the best I could with the tools that I had at the time. And I felt, I felt like my ex husband was traveling a lot. And he was my husband, obviously at the time. And he really wasn’t there to help pick up the pieces. Now his perspective is also going to be very different. So he’s more than welcome to come on this podcast and share that too. But I do want to say how regretful I am, that I couldn’t get the help that I needed, despite reaching out to what I thought was a good therapist who actually wasn’t, I think she probably did the best she could based on the fact that I gave her you know, 50 60% inflammation and lied most of the time anyway, I started experimenting with Vikon to help me with my emotional detachments. I think that worked for a while until we know that that didn’t. But as I continued to take the bike it in, over and over and over again, for four years, the damage was done, and I was really broken. And it was impossible for me to fix my relationship with my kids are even my ex husband, because now here I was getting a divorce, if I couldn’t even figure out how to heal myself. And when you are recovering from any kind of an addiction, or drug dependence or alcohol dependence, it’s not like you stop whatever the substance is, and then the next day, everything is better, there’s years that have to go by to repair it all. So by the time I was in a, an emotional state of mind to repair it, I couldn’t, I didn’t even know how. And my biggest regret is that this family did not get any kind of family counseling, so that my children would be equipped as they became adults to manage all of this, because in their minds, and I don’t know this, this is how I would feel in their minds. Their mother abandoned them, not only did their mother abandon them, their mother abandoned the family, even though I was going through the, the the motions of motherhood, you know, here, I gotta take you to piano here. I got to take you to baseball. Here, I got to drive you to camp. Let me sign your report card. They make you dinner. In my head, I abandoned my I abandon them. And in my head, they have every right to feel angry about me abandoning them. I don’t think that abandoning abandoning my children was a kind of a conscious thought here I am abandoning my kids. Aren’t I? A horrible mother? No, I did things that detached me from my emotional attachment to them and to him. And now I was saddled with this task, my own doing of having to figure out how am I going to live the rest of my life alone. And I had a horrible attorney who had said to me in my first session with him. Don’t take alimony because you will be married in a year. And I mentioned this before. And I thought, Oh, I don’t know what that means. But okay. So I didn’t take alimony. I didn’t put any pressures on my family for anything. I had to figure it out. And so I heard from in my head, I heard from my attorney saying you’ll be married in a year, meaning you’re not capable of taking care of yourself. So I hated that feeling.

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And I wasn’t quite sure what that really man and here I am. I mean, I’m not with anybody. But at the time I was going through the divorce and my ex husband had moved out. My children were coming home from school alone, because I was out working. I couldn’t pay my bills. I was you know, $80,000 in credit card debt that I had to carry. I wasn’t really getting anything other than a mortgage paid, which was great. But that was about it. I had a car payment. I had all these credit card bills, I had to pay the electric bill, I had to pay the cable bill with what I didn’t have any money. And I had to take a job. And I had been out of the workforce for about 15 years, I would say was 15 Maybe I that number might be off. But now I had to go back to work because I was no longer just a stay at home mother. So my young children had to and maybe my daughter wasn’t so young, but my son was pretty young. My children had to fend for themselves, and there’s hundreds, if not 1000s and 10s of 1000s of children who are latchkey kids whose mothers and fathers work, who come home to an empty house every day and make themselves lunch and, or snack and do their homework. And that’s how they live. I was a latchkey kid, I remember my mother going to work after my father had died. And before my mother had met my stepfather, I remember coming home and putting a chicken in the oven. But you know, I didn’t feel abandoned. And I can’t speak for how my children felt, except there is something that I believe my children probably felt that I know, I felt, which was, I am alone. That’s what I felt. And feeling alone can feel quite lonely. If you don’t have, you know, and what kind of an eight year old 10 year old kid, maybe even a little older, I think eights pretty young. But I have a feeling my eight year old son did come home alone.

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And a lot of the memories of this is very blurred. But I remember thinking, I don’t know what else to do. I’m not getting any slack here from my ex husband. I don’t know how angry I mean, I’m pretty sure he was pretty angry with me. But you know, he asked me for a divorce when I was in rehab, I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. And clearly I wanted the divorce. I’m not sure the timing of that was all that great. But I had to figure it out. And that meant the fallout for the kids was probably really bad. And then if a guy paid attention to me, I thought maybe maybe this could be a good relationship for me. And then I would be lonely. So I would go on dating apps, and maybe I would meet somebody, and then I did get in a relationship for 10 years. And I know that the person who I was in that relationship with is listening to this conversation right now with me speaking in, you know, on this podcast, and you were you were nice. And you know, I cared a lot about you, but you weren’t, you weren’t always the the nicest for me, in many respects, and especially with my kids, and you know that, and that’s okay. And you don’t have to apologize for it. It is what it is. But they were, you know, they were what they were and you were what you were and it was very difficult for me because I was caught between kids that didn’t really want to come stay with me. And then what was I going to do sit home alone all the time. So here I was in a relationship with you trying to help you with your kids. And I’m speaking a lot today from a perspective of my own when it comes to how I remember all of this. And I don’t think that that relationship that I’m speaking of my I know you’re listening was a healthy one. I don’t think that relationship was a healthy one. Because I I put in way, way more than you did. And that’s okay, because I got out of it. And you have your life, and I have my life. And what I learned is coming back to the topic of today, which is vandeman, you may feel like I abandoned you, when you were at your worse, just like I felt like people abandoned me when I was at my worst. And both of those things are true. But the end result is that we both abandoned ourselves. So I’m going to take you out of the equation, I’m only going to keep myself in this one. When I was at my worst I abandoned myself, I abandoned everything about myself that I cared about, I no longer cared about anything in life. I just I I just wanted to take the Vikon and feel that empowerment until the Vikon no longer worked. And here I was, what am I going to do? So when my ex husband asked me for a divorce while I’m in rehab, I thought well, that’s that. And so I had so much confusion about who stays with you when you’re at your worst. Who stays who does not walk away from you when you need them the most. And my reality was obviously if I go back to my father dying at seven, I probably needed him the most. At seven he died he left now that’s not his fault, but he did go he was gone. That was that was my first experience of feeling abandoned. And then for the boyfriends that followed who left the ones that treated me like crap. I left them but staying was worse. And then here I get my most sick and When my ex husband abandoned me, he didn’t, he didn’t visit me. He didn’t care. I mean, I, I’m sure he probably cared, I don’t felt like he cared enough to help us as a family unit through it, he didn’t have to stay with me. And I was very grateful that he drew a line. But walking away when I was at my worst, doesn’t teach our children great stuff. And that’s, and that’s a fallout that I’m afraid I can’t repair. But I will say that something happened for me when I left the last relationship that I was just in, after a 10 year stint, quarantine hit. And I said, you know, you’ve got only yourself to count on, nobody’s coming to rescue you. You don’t need a guy to save you. Because ultimately, you’ve been doing a lot of the saving since then. And the worst part is the people you should have been saving. Were your children, not a guy. And I thought, Well, how am I going to repair it with my kids? I don’t know. But I knew that it had to begin with myself. And the only way that I was going to recover from the horrors of feeling of those feelings of abandonment, was to get really comfortable with who I was and in my aloneness. And know that it does pass, and I don’t need somebody in my life to fulfill me. And by staying healthy, eating, eating healthy foods, and exercising and moving my body and, and growing professionally, and doing all the things I needed to do for me, which is what everybody talks about all over social media, do this do that, you’ll feel better, they forget the one important part of it is it will help you get to a place what I call balance, in which case, you can then hopefully, repair some of the other relationships that were not great for you. And one thing I will say, more than anything else, because of this podcast, because of the ability that I have to just speak into the microphone, and share what I’m sharing, I want to say to the people who love me, and who I love in return, and I want to say to my children, you didn’t deserve a mother who was emotionally detached. You didn’t deserve a mother who became addicted to Vikon, you didn’t deserve a mother, who numbed her sadness, with alcohol, or a combination of all of it, you didn’t deserve that. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you very, very much. I wish that I had gotten the help that I needed super early. And none of this would have happened, but I can’t change the past. I can however, own the fact that I definitely emotionally abandoned you and even physically abandon you. You know, I, I wanted your father to step up he did.

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I didn’t realize that came with the exclusion of me. I’m not saying that anybody said you can’t be near the kids. I just didn’t know what to do. And I had no money. And when you don’t have any money, it’s a big problem. And as a woman, you know, there’s always this idea in the back of your mind that some guy is going to save you. You’re going to, you’re going to find some rich guy who’s going to rescue you. And the truth of the matter is, I didn’t even want that. I just didn’t know what else to do. Because that was my go to. I don’t need a rich guy to rescue me. I can rescue myself and the lessons that I’ve learned through the podcast and sharing what I’m sharing is to help speak to you if you’re listening if you’re willing to listen. Because I can’t I can’t get much closer. I can’t have this conversation because for some reason, it just is a conversation that I don’t see either one of my kids wanting to have with me. And this is the best way that I know how to help them. You know, listen, I could die tomorrow. And they could listen to this podcast in full because I’m no longer here. And that would be great. They may listen even when I’m alive. And maybe they’ll have something to say about it and maybe they won’t, but the view He is they don’t have to listen all in one day, they can digest it a little bit here and a little bit, they’re happy, very proud to know that they listened and they thought positive things, I’d even be happy if my ex husband listened to this podcast, I’m not asking him to, I don’t even know if he knows that I have one. I mean, all you have to do is Google me. And it’s probably on the first page of Google. But the abandonment thing is a real thing. And until you get really, really comfortable with who you are, and you don’t have to worry about what anybody else thinks of you, you don’t have to worry about what your friends think. You don’t worry about whether or not you fit in, or whether anybody accepts you. Just you have to accept you. So then the abandonment thing just disappears. If you love who you are, and you give yourself some grace, because you’re still learning, so that means you’re going to make a whole lot of mistakes, and somebody else doesn’t like you for it, it’s okay, because you won’t care if they walk away from you, I have spent so much time conforming to the idea of what somebody else want wanted for themselves. And I’d fit into that mold. I don’t think it was so conscious at the time, but it’s so evident to me now. I abandoned who I was, I abandoned my, my my moral compass I, I abandoned my belief system. And I did it so that I could be accepted by somebody else, thinking they were going to make me whole or make me complete and you want to know something they didn’t. And neither will they do that for you. And when you allow other people to say, you need to lose weight, you need to wear this, you need to not talk so much, you need to talk more, you need to do this, you need to do that. You don’t, you need to get up and say I’ll see you because I don’t need to do this for you. There is a give and take in every relationship. And I understand that. And certainly I am no expert in it. I just know that my perception of what really goes on for me in relationships is that I put in way more than I should. Because I was so worried about being abandoned and being left. Honestly, I’m not afraid of that anymore. And if I never have another relationship for the rest of my life that’s you know, romantic or any of it. I’m okay with it. Some people might think I could never imagine living my life alone. And I’m here to say, it’s not as bad as you think. You get to do the things that you want to do unselfishly and unapologetically being abandoned is a horrible feeling. But we allow ourselves to have that happen. We position ourselves in such a way in our relationships that we’re so whatever deep in it, don’t leave me. How will I? How will I go on some people leave and do the most horrible, horrifying things, because they are so afraid of being abandoned. And I’m here to tell you dumpy, embrace that and get really comfortable with who you are. And I’m speaking to you. And I want my children to understand the level of independence that can be achieved by you know, feeling really good with who they are, if they’re sad.

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A pill isn’t going to change your sadness. If you’re depressed pill isn’t going to fix it. I tried. I know doctors out there will say, well, it’s hormonal. Take this, take that and all it did for me was make me messed up. You have to find I’m not saying you shouldn’t take medication. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that. If it’s not working, why are we still take medication. And if you’re angry, be angry, if you’re sad, be sad. But more importantly than anything, he’s got to start talking. We’ve got to start telling people how you feel. And I get to do it here in this platform of a podcasts because it feels really good. And whether people listen or they don’t listen, you know is not really The reason I started it in the first place, there will be listeners. And I hope they hear it. I hope they hear the reality of my life where I was so incredibly unhappy and felt very abandoned. In the early days that I did, I didn’t know how to fix it. So what did I do? I threw some pills down my throat, swish, swish, swish some wine, some scotch, whatever, didn’t work, did it? You know, what work my creativity and sharing what I had to share without feeling like I had to justify why I was feeling what I was feeling. I don’t have to justify it. I only have to articulate it. And now I get to do that. Utilizing a platform that didn’t exist when I was young. So that’s what I have to say about abandonment. Okay, well, if you like this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance, you can share it, you can download it, you can even write me a review. I also have a website, which is Don’t lose your balance calm. And I’m on Instagram with two accounts. Mallory underscore, Derek, and the other is Don’t lose your balance. M S D. That’s Mary Sam David. I hope today tomorrow and always you don’t lose your balance and I and I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey. And I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.