This morning in therapy, I talked about my big fear of losing people—not to death but to abandonment and platonic/familial “breakups.” Historically, I’ve been dumped a lot—not in romantic relationships but in friendships, which in my life are much more sacred. I am a person with big feelings and deep-seated values, and both of these aspects of me (or at least my messy, boisterous, imperfect expressions of them) seem to push people away. 

Someone recently warned me that my outspokenness about the Palestinian genocide would result in the loss of one of my best friends; they posited that her husband wouldn’t like my words, and so she would cut me off to honor him. Just recounting this conversation now evokes a lot of anxiety and fear in me. The feeling is a staticky buzzing around the perimeter of my body, like a crime-scene chalk outline, but instead of chalk, it’s electric fencing, vibrating with potential energy. It’s like the fear is trying to protect me, warding off the mere idea that my friend would cut me off for this (or any) reason. My nervous system, bless it, doesn’t think I can handle even considering this possibility. 

It also knows that I’m not going to shut up, to tamp down my advocacy efforts, to stop doing what I believe in my bones to be right. No matter the personal consequences, I’m going to keep trying to live up to my values—values that feel as integral to me as my DNA, life history, name, gender, inner voice. I hope that, as I continue to grow, I continue to learn and change and refine my strategies and efforts. I hope that my capacity for nuance continues to expand. I hope that, in 30 years, I’ll still be fighting for the same core principles—liberation, restorative justice, accountability, love—but with more wisdom, intelligence, maturity, empathy.

If the last 30 years are any indication of how the next 30 will go, I think my hopes will be realized. I have grown and changed a lot in my life (if you knew me during my libertarian phase, no you didn’t!), but my core values have remained pretty consistent. I have been a staunch feminist since before I knew the word for it. When I was six, I expressed total disbelief that my mom was going to change her name when she got married. I said I would never change my name to a husband’s. “You may feel differently when you’re older,” she said. (I don’t.) Around that same age, my vegetarian leanings began manifesting—again, before I knew that vegetarianism was a concept. I grieved regularly for the animals we ate: the chickens we passed in the truck on the interstate, the bloody ground beef not yet browned in the skillet, the fish we caught to be fried. (This last one is a classic family story. As it goes, I said something like, “How would you like it if a hamburger floated down from the sky, and when you went to eat it, you were yanked out of the world and killed?” My parents told me we were catching and releasing, and I, the most gullible kid on the planet, believed them. I didn’t even figure it out when we ate fish for dinner that night.)

In so many ways, I am still that gullible, empathetic, passionate little girl. I still feel things deeply, and I still believe what my loved ones tell me. A few years ago, when my (now former) friend told me I could “take all the time” I needed to process a rift we were experiencing, I trusted that she meant it. A couple of months (!) later, when I followed up with her and said that I was still processing and was grateful for the time she was allowing me, she informed me that, actually, she had already decided that our friendship was over, unbeknownst to me. When I expressed how blindsided I felt to another friend, they said, “Well, nobody actually means ‘take all the time you need.’” How silly of me, they implied, to have taken her at her word. Foolish little girl: when the fishing is done, and you go get ice cream with the other kids, the adults are going to find a hefty rock and use it to bash in the heads of those trout. And then they’re going to cook them and feed them to you, and you’re going to think it’s delicious, and they will snicker amongst themselves at their successful mission. Sucker.

You’d think that I would have learned from these experiences to be less trusting, and in some ways, I have. There is always a voice in my head saying, “Don’t be a fool. Don’t let them pull one over on you. You can’t trust anyone. Everyone will leave/lie to/betray/abandon you. Don’t be a sucker.” But even still, my default mode is one of faith in the people I love. I try to be less gullible now, more discerning, more aware. But I definitely err on the side of faith. I probably always will.

And so, I will probably always experience these fears of abandonment, and maybe I will continue to get “dumped” more than the average person. I don’t think I can protect myself from this in any meaningful way. I can’t stop striving to honor my beliefs, just as I can’t change my laugh or the content of my dreams or the way my hair poufs up after a walk in the wind. And so, people who disagree, who feel too confronted, who think I’m annoying, who aren’t willing or able to meet me out in that field “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” that Rumi wrote about—they are going to leave me. 

Therefore, I have to get stronger. I don’t want more protection. I don’t want an electric fence to keep the danger away, nor do I want to compromise my morals to deter personal grief. I also don’t want to become numb to the pain of loss; I want to continue to love with great magnitude, and I have to be prepared to mourn in equal measure. I’m not going to try to shield myself from abandonment; I’m going to commit, with as much passion and earnestness as ever, to developing a robust sense of self-worth. So that when I am inevitably left the next time, I will not again fall into a pit of despair so deep that it takes me years to climb out. So that another person’s revocation of love will not read to me as proof that I do not deserve love. So that, whether I am in a season of abundant relationships or am walking the road alone, I will understand myself worthy of care and compassion and joy and (ugh, fine, I’ll say it) love.

Currently, I do not believe that I am worthy of love, despite years of therapy, life coaches, spiritual practices, self-help books, and assurances from friends and family. In fact, just this morning, I bemoaned to my therapist how frustrating it is that I am still trying to untangle this knot. It feels sisyphean. I hope this isn’t one of those boulders I’ll be pushing uphill for the rest of my life. That warning voice in my head is scolding me for hoping, for believing that self-worth is attainable for me. But still, I believe. I must.

This world needs less self-protection and more self-worth. When a student tells me they are being picked on due to bigotry, I refuse to tell them, “Keep your true identity hidden so that you’ll be spared their bullying.” When a friend is scared to come out to his parents, I refuse to advise him to stay closeted. When a woman tells me she is scared of being sexually assaulted, I refuse to tell her to wear more conservative clothes. Because what I’d really be saying is: you are the problem. Striving for love and acceptance and full-throated self-expression isn’t worth the risk. Let the kids pick on somebody else. Let your parents’ bigotry stay dormant until your own child must be the one to face it. Let the rapist rape someone else instead of you. 

We need more people who, dripping with the self-worth that is every person’s divine right, will live with integrity, stand up for what they believe, and risk momentary pain for the greater rewards of personal flourishing and societal progress. Our culture is mired in compulsive avoidance, birthed by our widespread belief of our own unworthiness. I think it all boils down to fear. But I know that a robust, formidable bravery lives within me, and it lives within everyone else, too. At least, that’s what I believe.