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Learning to Love as an Estranged Student. By Lucy

Hello! My name is Lucy. I am a History student in Cardiff, I love to read books and spend a lot of my free time baking or having my friends over for dinner.

I often find myself forgetting the impact that my estrangement had on me; being estranged from the age of 9, it seems a part of me, the way my name is. But every so often, I become the little girl whose mum promised she would come back and never did, crying in the school bathroom the next day because she never showed up.

I question why she left me, even 10 years later, seeing her care for my siblings on Facebook. I spent so many late nights searching for answers: she is capable of love, so why can’t she love me enough to see me? If you are reading this and feel similar, I want to stress one thing to you: the way they treated you and the way they made you feel has nothing to do with who you are as a person. Abuse or abandonment does not care how kind you are, how creative you are, or how hard you work.

It took me a long time to feel like I was worth something; in the end, I always ended up evaluating myself. My scores at school, how productive I am, how much I benefited those around me. I got into toxic relationships; I thought that was what they were meant to look like, that it was what I deserved. Constantly proving yourself and making huge sacrifices were just the way relationships worked, that not feeling anything towards them was evidence of how broken I was.

It was not a man that swept me off my feet that made me feel self-worth; it was looking at myself through my eyes and not others. My worth is not linked to what I can do for others; it never was. I am a girl who cries at strangers’ weddings, who finds joy in the rain, who laughs at stupid jokes until my belly hurts, who is stronger than she thinks, who is no longer that 9-year-old girl her mum left, the girl who makes dad jokes and has to speak in a baby voice to every animal she sees.

My estrangement and trauma had become so much of my identity that I felt it was all there was to me, that I was too broken to love or, in fact, born unlovable. The thing is that one day you will find someone who loves you and recognises your struggle. This doesn’t just have to be romantic; it’s that friend that understands you without you having to say anything at all.

It has taken me a long time to get to this point: unhealthy relationships and poor mental health. To the reader, take a moment to look around; love is everywhere, and you are so deserving of it. Never let anyone make you believe that it is not true. Being estranged is a big part of who we are, but it is not all that we are.

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