Over the course of my lifetime, I have learned and re-learned the lesson of what it feels like to be treated like trash, like something disposable. I am trying to do something with that feeling and its attendant grief. I find myself falling into the misguided desire to turn this feeling, which I need to simply sit with, into doing something productive.

I entered my teen and adult years absolutely terrified everyone was going to leave me.

I have this terrible, sinking feeling that we’ve learned to see one another as commodities. That we pick people the way we might select a bar of soap or a box of cookies and that we then expect perfection from the experience. If someone doesn’t live up to the expectation imposed on a commodity—providing exactly what they want, nothing more or less or unexpected—then we cast them aside, ignore them, degrade them, tell some lie that’s akin to “It’s not you, it’s me” and move on to any of the other 6 billion human commodities this world has to choose from.

Today, I’ve officially lost one of the deepest, most meaningful friendships I have ever had in my life, one that was years in the making. Not to death or a big move that’s created physical distance. Not to a huge blowout or anything I can easily look to for an explanation. There have been smaller losses, too, which serve to counterpoint the real loss, the central loss, the way rivulets feed into a stream.

If I were to make a map of losses, each loss constituting one circle drawn on a sheet of paper, they would be as plentiful as lily pads at Juanita Beach Park in the middle of summer, or as balloons at a privileged child’s birthday party. I could skip over the circles with my index and middle finger in feigned play that masks the pain. I could skip all the way back to the largest circle of all, a loss I didn’t expect to survive: that of my father.

But he died, he died, I tell myself. He didn’t choose to leave. Others have chosen, the way they might, without giving it a second thought, move on from a Facebook profile, or unsubscribe from an RSS feed.

Because I lost my father so young, I entered my teen and adult years absolutely terrified everyone was going to leave me. So I left them before they could go. I got the hell out of there while the getting was good. I dated people and broke it off. I even married one person and broke it off. At transition points—such as graduation from high school and college—I was the one who never wrote my friends at their new addresses, the one who never called, the one who dropped postcards I received into the recycling bin and later, if pressed, said, “You sent a card? I don’t think I got it.” I was also the one who did not speak to my mother for nine months before she died.

I’ve learned the hard way that this way—the way of leaving, of getting out, of protecting myself against what I think might happen if I stay (abandonment, death)—is not the way. I’ve spent half my life learning this lesson. I’ve also learned another lesson, which is to hold onto those I love. To just hold on. As I’ve learned this lesson, I’ve also learned to say words like “I love you” and “I care for you” and “I am here for you.”

I realize that I now have an even bigger lesson to learn, which is that I must stay with this stance and attitude, one of holding on, even as others are still caught in a mode of letting go, including letting go of me. I won’t go back to letting go first in order to protect myself. If I care for you, I care for you. If I love you, I love you. If I am there for you, I am there for you. I can’t control how anyone else behaves, and I can’t make their choices for them. I can only control my own behavior and choices. I won’t turn away from others out of fear of being rejected, even if that means there are times when I will, in fact, experience rejection, not just worry it’s coming.

Perhaps I am not trash after all. I’d rather think of myself as recyclable material. My love, my devotion, my desire to connect—these are aspects of my character that cannot be thrown away, not by anyone. They remain, even through the hurt and suffering, and they continue to have a place in the world. In this way, they continue to help me find my way.