Timeiskey

This is a very long post, but I think you will like it. I worked on this reflection all weekend and might try to flesh it out and try to publish it.

Today makes it four months and six days of being alone. Not an aloneness of isolation from the world, but 127 days of an aloneness that comes upon the heels of a break up. These months have been akin to climbing an arduous mountain scape with sheer cliffs, dark caverns, eroding edges and peaceful peaks. If I didn’t know better, it would simply be the mountain of recovery that comes from working your way through the painful process of letting go of a loving relationship…but it isn’t. If it was, perhaps it would be the size of a mountain at the foothills of the Appalachians. This however, was more like Mount Vesuvius, with its gnashing angry lava spilling down to rummage through my mind and melt away my resolve. And the fire that promoted this lava was fueled by alcohol. My alcohol, his alcohol but most importantly, the alcohol upon which my childhood had been molded.
It is said that in our middle school years, our brains are developing at such a high rate that our brains produce more cells than we can use or keep, and the ones that we use- the ones that we work- survive and the others die away. In those cells that survive are the actions that we take, the memories/practices/ideologies that develop our sense of understanding and direction of perspective in the world. I can attest to this fact, as can all of those who force their way through the foggy past to access those experiences and times in an attempt to understand the building blocks of their consciousness. Mine was predicated by the choices and drives that propelled my mother to her devastation. Mine were centered upon the sadistic glee of my troubled stepfather- by their disabling dance of destruction.
Flash forward twenty five years and here I find myself once again, repeating history- playing all the roles of both victim and aggressor, denier and accuser, torturer and the tortured. It has been the comfortable, albeit, insane and painful cycle of my life. Throughout, I have had the luxury of an intelligence that, almost removed from myself, has been my life’s buoy. The life preserver in the midst of a sinking ship. The trouble with such a device is that you cannot live fully within it alone. And as I have floated through life’s constantly changing ocean, I have found myself withering in the face of all the water. That was, until I met Phil. He, like my usual choices in men, was ill-prepared to deal with life as well. After all, like finds like. I felt a kinship, could see his shortcomings (or at least those that I would allow myself to acknowledge), but also the potential of his spirit. Just like my mother, there was charisma and a bigness to his personality that was almost tapered by his intellect. But that isn’t quite right, is it? It was not his intelligence that created restrictions, but his secrets that were tucked firmly away someplace within him where processing, acceptance and change were not a threat. But that was what was so familiar, so comforting and appealing.
Addiction, Codependence and denial are all very dirty words in our society. We run from them, turn our noses up at them, our backs we turn and we try to walk on a different path away from these ideas…ironically, there is only one path and it is how we choose to walk it that paves the way forward. You cannot run from these things. You can move towards them, through them or walk with them. Those are the only choices. But these are choices none the less. Painful choices, hard choices, scary choices…
I did not know these things four months and six days ago. I was familiar with the idea, but just like with Phil, my own ability to reason through my life was marred by things that I felt powerless to tackle. I had learned at a young age that being alone was impossible, a sin, and the one thing that was worse than being miserable. Choose misery over solitude. Choose to be unhappy through someone rather than learn to be happy on your own. And with this understanding, there is only really one choice in a partner- someone who was never alone with themselves, because their priority- their number one relationship- was with something that was truly intangible. I have been with narcissists who were really with themselves, with potheads, who were really with the illusion of an altered state, and with alcoholics whose first priority was addiction. In these relationships, I held the tenuous position of second or third, fourth or fifth. Somewhere that was not solid and sure…somewhere where misery lies. And in this familiar place, the pain always sat just below the surface threatening to rise up and take me under. I have been called charming, charismatic, loving, funny, chilling and hostile. And I am all of these things. All rolled into one tumbling ball of emotional instability. And the only thing that appeared to be my saving grace was the acceptance, love, and true embracing from and of the one person who could not give me those things- the man who was already in a relationship with the intangible. So, how does one seek to gain something that is fleeting in another? By engaging in their practices, of course. It is called coping. So I became obsessed with their needs, became a pothead, an alcoholic, a mimicking shadow of what I knew and what I wanted to become.
Here is the typical pattern of a Codependent. You begin by ignoring the red flags. You might express you concern but it is tempered by your deepest sacrifice of love and hope. You begin by sacrificing your standards one by one, molding yourself around the paradigm of the emerging relationship. You quickly lose your possessed identify as you begin to focus your time and effort on the other. Perhaps you engage in their practices, perhaps you engage in trying to change their practices, perhaps you do both. You give and give and sacrifice and in your own understanding, this formula equals out to a return of your efforts on their part. They become your expected shadow. You expect that your giving will be acknowledged, appreciated and returned…but it isn’t. And then you begin to grow resentment out of the seeds of your love. These wild weeds grow quickly and begin to suffocate your true compassion, your true ability to be kind and what takes the place are acts of control. But you have none, because that which you try to control is not within your power to even guide. This lack of power is internalized, confirming the low self-image that you actually possess and as the world unravels around you, so goes your mind. You might have come to the situation with calmness and rational thoughts and actions. But you leave with recklessness, the inability to control your emotions and sometimes your actions. You are nothing more than a spiraling object hurdling through space. Which way is up? Which way is down? It can be quite confusing and you might not know in what direction you are moving, but trust me, whatever way you are moving- that direction is down.
It was in this condition that I found myself, once again, four months and six days ago. Completely off equilibrium and with only a vague sense of the objects and figures that were in my world. There was only emotion, painful emotion and the sense of being lost even to myself. But this time, I was lucky. I have been told repeatedly that I had won the lottery. In a sense, it was very true. In a very real sense, that was true. What was different this time from all the others?
Well, anyone who knows what I am describing from experience knows that there are all kinds of bottoms. All kinds of way to be led to and away from darkness. Those who identify here that have put in some time and work on themselves, whether it be through readings, one-on-one therapy or through group meetings, such as Al Anon, can attest that there is a moment, just like with recovering alcoholics where you hit bottom. My bottom came in steps…of course it did, after all, I had been in this place for my entire adult life. It began at the end of June when I took two flights, two trains and a bus to be with Phil is Switzerland.
Our relationship was already very rocky by that point. The beginning months had been both promising and foreboding and I, in my usual fashion, could not see any way that I could actually look at the negative and contemplate leaving him. The last few months had been very telling. Looking back, I can see now how the pattern plays out. The relationship had run its course in about seven months, but I was no quitter. And for three more, I put in even more effort, more money and more growing resentment as I took stock of the encroaching loneliness that was emerging within the relationship. The more I did to try to make it work, the less he seemed concerned about trying. He was still there almost all the time, but only lying in wait. I do not wish to paint Phil in a negative light. For I am not saint and make no effort to color myself that way either. It takes two. It always does. But I was definitely losing more and more of him to alcohol. So, between my big gestures of love and effort to keep going in the relationship, I found my own comfort in the bottle. Together we lived in separate relationships with the same thing- the drink.
There are memories from that time that I clung to at the end. The several breakfasts-in-bed that I made him that he didn’t bother to eat. The dinner that I labored to make that went uneaten that night because he came home drunk and forgot and instead chose a hotdog and soggy fries, saying to me between mouthfuls, “well, your meal will be better tomorrow.” There was the surprise birthday party that he knew about and so took his sweet time coming home to, staying an hour later at the bar just to get a few more drinks in before making his appearance. The vacation to Florida that he had invited himself on and that I had then made all about him so that when he showed up to get in the car, was completely drunk and unruly. Sleeping through both my planned snorkeling excursion and the entire thirteen hour drive home. But none of that was enough for me to give up or give in. And when it was time to meet him on his work trip in Switzerland, with every sign from heaven telling me to just accept the truth and stay home, I decided to make my way there anyway.
It was a daunting trip, mostly because he had been too drunk the two days/nights before to coherently make the effort to speak with me on the phone and help me resolve my concerns about exactly where I was traveling to. This was a remote spot that would take over a day of travel to get to and although I love adventure, I do not love adventure without proper preparation. When I got there, I was exhausted, upset and resentful. I, of course, began drinking immediately- he of course, was prepared with my drink of choice- beer. Partly out of coping with my own emotions and partly out of realizing that Phil was on a binge, I knew that making that trip had been a mistake. After a day of altered awareness, I came to enough to realize that this was going to be a very hard trip if I couldn’t get control of the situation. I practically begged Phil to moderate. I did the same for a day or two but found myself swimming in alcohol for the majority of the trip.
I had thought that we might take bikes and ride the seven miles to the Italian border. Perhaps we would have a romantic night together, just the two of us, over a single bottle of wine. But alas, the entire trip was predicated on alcohol and my desire for something else- meaning marijuana. By day four, I had finally gotten my weed and so was no longer dependent on the drink for my entertainment. This only made it easier to see Phil’s condition. After all, I surely wasn’t going to look at my own. What happened in that hotel room and in the streets of this beautiful and quaint town pushed me to my end. There was a moment in particular, where Phil, in utter intoxication, pushed me up against the wall, not out of anger, but out of a drunken attempt at seduction. He lowered his face until he was eye to eye with me and exhaled a grumble that shook me to sobriety. I looked past his shoulder to the table of half-empty bottles and back into his vacant eyes…such old eyes for someone so young. It was in that moment, that I saw my mother.
I grew up believing that the past was not something that you could place blame on for your current choices. The thieves and murderers who cried out blame for their actions on their sad childhood rubbed me wrong at my base core. After all, if I could move on and become a functioning person, then no one had the right to live in the past as a place to make excuses for their present. But I see now, that there is another option. One where we accept that the past has created foundations on which we stand. Our choices and our actions are our own. However, unless we learn to cope in healthy ways, unless we find a way to really examine and deal with the past, then our actions and our choices will be predicated by the illnesses of the past instead of the opportunity for healthiness in the future.
By the last morning, I was disgusted to my core- with him, with me, with the conditions by which we were living. In my true Codi way, I tried to talk to him about it and when he would not communicate openly and soberly, I took to the drink and exploded. Nasty and violent words spilled from my mouth as the anger and hate began to take over. A few days later, we came together soberly to talk about our relationship. I had spent those days alone, talking with a few close family members and trying to find a way to save my love. He had escaped to his enabling friends and was finding his way to walking away.
He came to me that last day a different man. One who wanted none of the promises we had made for the future. One who did not want to deal with the hard reality of working to change the things that had broken our love. He was choosing the alcohol. It was his mother, a lovely woman, whose own struggle with her past left her as debilitated as us, who showed me the light. She patiently and lovingly pushed the leaves away that covered my path and showed me exactly what I was doing and where I was going. I was recreating my relationship with my mother and father, attempting to, this time, change the course of history and validate myself by making it work where it had not worked before. But repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity and that is what I was. I broke ties with her and over the course of the next three months moved between healing and recovery and stumbling returns to Phil. Each time, I was drunker, each time more angry at his inability to truly be sorry for the wrongs he had done. “For every time he had gnashed at me, I gnashed back two or three.” This became my sad and remorseful mantra.
The last time he drunkenly and carelessly rejected me, the proverbial punch to my stomach left me hollow. And when I found myself trying to diffuse the situation by reasoning, he gripped my shoulders and yelled into my face, “Get the **** out of my house!” At that moment, there was an emotional switch inside me that turned on. It was a nonphysical emotional cornering in my psyche and It turned on all my rage from my history. It shut off all my self-controls and reasoning and I became a monster for a moment. My rage exploded and I backed him down to a sitting position on the floor with my words and movements. I removed everything from his house that was a memory of us and as I left, he slammed the door behind me. My reaction was immediate and violent. I broke in his door and as he flayed his hands in fear and intoxication, I slapped him firmly across his face. And that moment and action broke me. That violent action tore at my numbing soul and I backed down. I was still angry but something inside me screamed out in fear of myself.
I will never be able to change that moment. If I could, while keeping the understanding that it brought me, I would give almost anything to change it. But I can’t. And so, after a few days of the most dark and demeaning point in my life, I began to take stock of what I had been learning in recovery, the actions that I had taken that countered my work on myself, and I began to get truly honest with myself. It has been a troubling and sad time. I have seen women come and go from his house. I have walked past him almost daily without looking or acknowledging him. I am thankful that he didn’t have me put into jail. I am thankful that I didn’t do real and lasting physical harm. But I had harmed us both irrevocably. There is nothing that I can do for him. Just as there is no way that I can do anything for my deceased mother. No way of settling the score or giving him the apology that he truly deserves, because as I begin to get healthier now, he is not. So, any action or attempt on my part would not be internalized to help him only to confirm his righteousness. For that, I am sorry as well, but that is not my work. It is his.
Today, I realized something. As I walked by his front porch and saw the drinks that he shared with someone last night, my heart began to break a little again. He has moved on and I am still here working through the damage of my past. To know he is with someone else leaves me breathless sometimes. But here is what I realized: My mother wanted to be a good mother. She wanted to do right by me and show me love and help me become a healthy and functioning human being. She wanted to help others as well. But she couldn’t. And all of that inability only pushed her closer to the thing that was taking it all away.
I know that Phil loved me. That he had wanted to believe and tried to be the kind of man that could be in a relationship. I wanted to believe and tried to be the kind of woman that could be in a relationship. But neither of us succeeded. So, he moves on in his same way. Building something with a new woman around the commonality of the drink. The drink is still the constant. So, it doesn’t matter who is sitting on the other side of that table. It could be me, or someone better or someone worse off. It could be woman of his dreams, his soul mate, or his redeemer. But in reality, we must be that for ourselves first. We must save ourselves from ourselves before we can truly give to another. It is not an easy road to recovery, no matter what your addiction- drugs, alcohol, or the pain you first derived from loving in dysfunction. It is painful and scary and lonely sometimes. But there are also moments of forgiveness, moments of divine intervention, and moments of peace as you learn to use different strategies to cope that put you on a healthier road.
There are the mornings where you wake up clear minded and with an immediate understanding of the strides you took the day before that made this morning a little easier. There are the moments of sadness that can seem so dark that you have to learn to pull yourself out of and away from your mind quickly and remove yourself from the self-pity that has haunted your actions and thoughts for so long.
On this path, you come across small polished stones that you collect and each of these grants you a little more forgiveness, for yourself and for those who you have loved and eventually hated. It is a slow moving recovery, but as you move forward, and you see the empty bottle of beer that some woman drank while spending time with your ex- or whatever it is that surprises you during the day, you can pull those stones out of your pocket and roll them over in your hands and that forgiveness that is within, can put you firmly back on your own path…away from the sadness and the self-loathing. Away from actions that perpetuate the pain. Away from the moments of rejection and confirmation of your limited self-worth and within this effort, is the way to loving yourself. No matter what your own path is littered with. No matter what the shame or hurt or baggage. We all have the right to put it down, if only little by little, and move forward with a freer mind and finally with a lighter heart. I hope all of you find one of those polished stones today and feel a little better for the good work you have done so far.

NorCaliGal

Timeiskey -

Wow! Thank you so much for your eloquent, powerful post. Thank you for sharing your ESH.

Your description of co-dependence is so spot on, and expresses so completely and exactly where I am right now in my relationship with my ABF.

NCG