a journey into a new me...

Jan 2012, I realized I became the sum of a very tough game, codependency.  Little did I know this until one fateful day when I was asked a series of 10 questions and I answered yes to NINE of them!!!!  It was at this exact point in time when I KNEW I had to change.  Codependency, for those who are unaware of this term,  is an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, and I had become that, or maybe I was that all along, it was just at that point in time, it was taking a negative toll on my life.  So, I began making the necessary changes I felt I needed to make in order to release myself from this way of living.

In 2006, I met a person who I would allow to pull me into a life of insanity.  I believed I loved this person with my whole being.  I felt that I had finally "gotten it right."  On the exterior, and to most everyone else, things seems great.  It wasn't until 3 years later that I realized what was happening to me on the inside.  I wanted to make this work, I didn't want to be the person, who, yet again, walked away from another relationship because things had gotten difficult.   Life had become a whirlwind of emotions, lies and pain so great I didn't even know it was pain.

For years I had been involved in relationship after relationship where I had become the victim of abuse, sexual, emotional, mental and physical.  Of all the abuse, emotional and mental abuse is the worst.  Once a manipulative person realizes that you are vulnerable or even naive to what is happening, they just sink their teeth right in and hold on tight.  There are days when you can see that things are what they seem but then you are so afraid of being strong, you forget how to be, until it becomes inevitably necessary.

I'm not too proud to say that I joined Al-Anon, an organization, based off the steps of AA, to help family and friends of alcoholics who have nowhere else to turn and are ready for change.  I had thought about going for many months prior to actually going, and it wasn't until a friend, who had been sober 17 years at the time, had suggested I go that I decided it was time.  So off I went.  I was running late for my first meeting, I was so nervous that I almost didn't go in.  But, I did.  I was greeted with smiles, but felt very much like an outsider.  I had no idea how this was going to help me help my loved one who had a problem with his drinking.  And there in lies the truth.  I THOUGHT I was there to help him, but when I walked out of my first meeting, I wasn't walking into a second one to help him, I was walking into my second meeting to help ME.  I would never had even returned for a second meeting if another girl, who would quickly become my sponsor, hadn't done one random act of kindness.  She gave me a book, THE book, One Day At a Time (ODAT).  This book has been like the bible for me.  Her kindness in giving me a book that she no longer used was the reason I returned.  She gave me her phone number along with the book and invited me back for another meeting.

The one thing that I honestly learned from Al-Anon meetings was how to live one day at a time and how to live by the serenity prayer.  Once you can truly understand and accept that there is only ONE person you can change, YOURSELF, you start to look at things differently.

The Serenity Prayer:
"God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change" -- oftentimes, this is as far as I can even get into it BUT, even if I am struggling with my anger, emotions or anxiety, as long as I can be reminded that I cannot change anything that is not controlled by me, it puts me back on the right path.  It is often difficult to even accept that you cannot change another individual, especially when you think you know what is best for them. The only person you have control over is YOU.  Learning that was my greatest accomplishment.  It also helped me learn to live one day at a time.  I cannot control what is going to happen tomorrow, until tomorrow gets here, so why cloud my mind with what if's?  I just live.  For today.  For this moment.

I live a life of no regrets.  I do not regret any decision I have made, I do not place blame on any other person for what has happened in my life.  What has happened on my journey called life, has happened for a reason. All of it.  I embrace the lessons that are put in front of me, and more importantly, I learn from them.

This past year has been my freedom.  Freedom from a life of insanity, negativity and allowing others to bring me down to a point where I don't even know who I am.  I do not take much personally anymore, especially when I do not know what has happened in another person's life to bring them to where they are.  Their burdens are their own, I cannot carry another person's worries and burdens for them.