The day I started writing this journal.
After years of searching for a way to cure my husband of alcoholism, thus solving all of my problems, I had just discovered the term "codependence". My role in the disease. My role in the alcoholic relationship.
It was completely intriguing to me to realize that for a very, very long time, I'd been looking at this whole thing the wrong way. Instead of fixing my husband, what I really needed to do was fix myself.
I couldn't put down my paperback copy of Melody Beattie's "Codependent No More". As I read it, I got it. I truly got it. I spent the next several months sorting through it in my mind; understanding how I got this way. Stories from my childhood, stories from every relationship I'd ever been in were whirling at me, and they all starting falling in to place, like pieces fitting into one big jigsaw puzzle. It was all making sense to me now.
I knew I had to break this pattern of behavior, and I knew it wouldn't happen overnight--after all I didn't get this way overnight. For the next several months, I would read everything I could get my hands on concerning codependence. I studied and I wrote, and I worked very hard to be aware of, and avoid the triggers and the behaviors that were responsible for my unhealthy behavior and my misery.
At this point in time I believed that if I could conquer my codependence, I would become healthy and independent. When that happened, my husband would no longer have his enabler, his yin-yang counterpart in this disease, and may just follow my lead and become healthy and happy too.
I knew I was on to something big. I was determined to have a healthy mind, and I was determined to have a healthy marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment