Being Codependent (my miscellaneous ramblings)

The first time this term ever came to my ears I thought of someone who supported a drug addict or alcoholic. I've come to realize that is not necessarily true.

I was seeing a therapist in Delaware, working on some issues that have plaqued me all my life and when she suggested a book called Codependent No More - How to stop controlling others and start caring for yourself - I kinda looked at her funny. I said I don't live with an alcoholic or drug addict.. So anyhow I got the book at her suggestion and began reading it. I was shocked to be reading about ME in those pages, it was down right eerie. Well needless to say the book and the therapist were hitting a bit to close to home and I stopped reading the book and seeing her.

Recently though I've been in a lot of emotional pain and thought about that book again and dug it out and I've began to read it once again. While I'm sure to some degree we are ALL codependent - when it gets to a point you don't take care of you any longer because you are so wrapped up in someone/something else, it becomes a problem. There are about 8 1/2 pages of characteristics of codependency and to some degree I fit every single fucking one of them. The activity asks you to re-read thru the list and put a 0 next to those characteristics that are NEVER a problem for you, 1 next to those that are sometimes a problem and a 2 next to those that are always a problem for you.. Well out of 8 1/2 pages of single bulleted characteristics I have about 90% #2's, 9% #1's and maybe just maybe 1% are ZEROS.

I guess these tendancies started for me at a very young age. I always felt I was the mother to my two younger brothers. I don't fault my mom for being a single parent and having to work, things happen, but I do fault her for never showing us love and affection. I've come to realize that you don't have to shower kids with elaborate gifts, expensive vacations, etc. but if you give them love (tell them you love them), give them hugs and kisses and tell them your proud of them(not that they are mother fucking idiots and yes she used these words), that they matter(not oh what will the neighbors think), its amazing how they can turn out.

I'm not asking anyone for pity or sorrow, I guess in reality what happened to me as a kid made me determined to not do that to any child in my life. Granted it also made me frightened to have children of my own for fear of being like my mother and that fear was so great I never had children.

My mom was the kind of person that never told us she loved us, could only see the bad in what we did, never the good, never encouraged us to reach higher or achieve more. Many times, so she could have a life without kids, we were sent to live with relatives over the summers. Hell one year we were literally sent away for an entire year to live with an uncle, this was during my sophmore yr in high school. She likes to tell us its because she was sick and I've told her many times I will NEVER believe that story until she can provide me some sort of proof of some illness she was battling. I was 15 yrs old and certainly old enough and mature enough at the time to handle whatever she could have told me she was dealing with. Needless to say I've never seen any proof of said illness and I've asked my uncle that we lived with and don't get straight answers either. I'm now 40 yrs old I think I can handle whatever it may have been when I was 15.

I don't hate my uncle for any of this because in hindsight it was the first time in my life I was able to be a 15 yr old and not be a mother to two younger brothers. I can see that now but when I was taken from my friends in Indiana and moved to Maryland for a year, a new high school and all, it wasn't as easy to see. but eventually I made friends and got to actually go out and do things, like footballs games, bowling, movies, spend the night at friends houses - mostly things I never got to do before or had my siblings in tow.. Said uncle has since passed away, August of 2005 and sadly I never told him how thankful and grateful I was for what he did for my brothers and I that year.

I don't hate my mother but I don't necessarily love her like I should either and I know I must learn to forgive but it too will take some time. But I have learned I need to also spend this year working on getting me right, I have to learn who I REALLY am, what I really like to do, what makes me happy.. I've spent so much of my 40 yrs controlling people and things around me that I don't know WHO I AM. My lack of trust has even spread to God.. I am afraid to trust God, the one person I should be able to trust.. but I guess having always felt that sense of abandonment it has made me fearful of putting to much into anyone or anything.

This will certainly be an interesting journey for me emotionally this year as well as physically with my goals I'd like to achieve and to be honest I have no idea where I will end up once its all said and done. I do believe however I will be a much stronger, both mentally and physically, person when the REAL KIM emerges on the other side.