Stop

When I stop doing, I have no choice but to notice that someone else is being taken care of by the universe. What happens to them is not my fault. It’s a function of their emotions and experience.

When I stop doing (reacting) related to myself, it’s an opportunity for me to integrate emotions and sensations. If we stop doing something about them (suppressing them and/or distracting ourselves), and sit with them, they have an opportunity to process in our bodies.

We can just stop…

The Worst Codependent Things I Do

I believe that I make a difference in someone else’s life.

I don’t let go.

October in The Northern Hemisphere

October in The Northern Hemisphere

The Truth about being Codependent with an Alcoholic/Addict

Well, this is one of my truths. It may not be yours.

When he is in the thick of it, I think that something I do or say or some way that I act will make a difference. Make a difference in his decisions, in how he feels…about himself or me, or the world, or how well he understands his situation.

This is not true. He is playing the world like a chess game. No, he doesn’t have to know how to play chess to do this. He knows how the rest of the world, everyone around him, moves, reacts, acts. And until he decides something truly for himself about changing his experience, or until he is open to some message (from God, the Universe, etc. etc.), that is all that he does. Until he decides something for himself, about himself with his true self, I am just a game piece.

The feeling of helplessness I have felt in trying to help him, or in caring for him, in part comes from that truth…

The other truth, more mine, and more important to the decisions I need to make every day, is that, if I see nothing truly getting better or being as it should in a healthy sane way, then I am getting something unhealthy out of being anywhere near him.

I think it is a selfish thing…or maybe just a self-sabotaging thing. I have stayed around to take what I can get, from someone who doesn’t even have enough to give himself. How preposterous is that?

And I have been through this before. In past relationships, and of course, all the way back to my mother and father. I learned that love is actually accepting less than you need, and pretending that someone else will eventually give you what you need if you stick around and play their game, or believe their story for long enough.

Yeah. So the answers are there. And if this is all true, how can it feel so excruciating to separate from someone, from a situation like this? If it is so torturous to be in that pattern, how can it be so painful to remove oneself from it? I know the answer to that. But…damn we are complex emotional beings. Aren’t we…

A Little Deeper

At this moment, as I am trying to let go, I come to realize the deeper challenge.

I am not just bringing myself to let go of someone who has been traumatic for me more recently. I am also trying to let go of someone who has been closer to my heart closer to who I am, and the most peaceful presence and I have experienced.

I am feeling sadness and devastation that I have been putting in the back seat so that I can function, do the basics, work, be with friends and others without sobbing like a baby…

I haven’t been feeling. Everything. I’ve been outwardly focused. Worried about inconveniencing others and drawing certain kinds of reactions; ones that I feel are irritating or unnecessary or hurtful or that will make me feel ashamed.

But last night I cried. I felt it. My body is showing me pain so that I’ll stop pushing through and just be.

Ankle, shoulder, neck…All to slow me down so that I pay attention to how human (not superhuman or indestructible) I am.

You

If you pay attention to how you feel you’ll know exactly what to do, what to accept, when to stop, what not to do. The mess that comes after not having paid attention to your feelings for so long feels absolutely disorienting, confusing, at moments even hopeless.

All there is left is to slowly, all over again, pay attention to how you feel.

Right now, I feel as though I am catching up, that I have to catch up. I don’t think I am thinking in a useful way though. I can’t undo what I have let myself experience, what I have put myself through. I really want to know, simply, how to not do it again.

Right now I feel like I just jumped roads. I have stopped answering the phone. I have stopped allowing myself to feel the amount of guilt I was feeling. Just focusing completely on the simplest things I have to do, and not including ‘saving someone else’ as one of those. The ability to breathe feels good. I feel less of a 100lb weight on my head.