Language Exploration: Abandonment.
30 Nov 2013
Abandonment: The removal from a position and/or the act of voiding an investment.
Geographical abandonment, perhaps, may be the easiest to deal with due to the combination of a singular event and the concrete nature of the result. Such a state allows the abandoned an opportunity to grieve properly and begin anew. That is not to say Geographical Abandonment is a preferable state, but compared to its more damaging alternative, Proximal Abandonment, it is.
Proximal Abandonment is the state of having a/the source of pain co-located with the abandoned. Proximal Abandonment can be from many sources: financial, emotional, moral, mental, and more. Due to the co-location, however, Proximal Abandonment is a re-occurring source of multiple pains: the pain of the abandonment itself, the confusion and/or despair caused in the abandoned by its ongoing nature, and more. Proximal Abandonment has, by its very nature, the capacity to fill the abandoned with the empty hopes of a better future; the abandoned expends so much trying to change what is beyond its power to change and in the end is hurt more.
Abandonment is a corrupting vacuum, directing internal resources away from other struggles to combat the myriad of impulses and mistrust that may well within. The abandoned will, at some point, begin to expend their own fuel keeping their hearts warm against the cold tendrils of the void they find themselves in. At some point, left on their own, the abandoned will run out of fuel. Further contributing to the corrupting nature of abandonment is the ogre’s choice the abandoned are left with: defensively abandon the abandoner, or hold your ground and be hurt more. Abandonment can corrupt with a quiet insidiousness due to its lack of a necessary maliciousness. Neither the abandoned nor the abandoner may have ‘done anything wrong;’ they both may have had ‘the best intentions at heart.’ Such a scenario only allows the hearts of the abandoned to be corrupted that much easier: none of the crime and all of the punishment.
Knowing this, is there some kind of barometer from which to measure? (I offer:) When one is either oblivious or apathetic to the damage inflicted upon you, but was not previously, you have been abandoned.