You like me, you really like me… (please, God, say you like me)

After a conversation with a friend yesterday about my last post, I decided to write and expand a bit on what codependency means for me. I Googled the definition and several options came up — but I found the offer from Wikipedia to be a bit harsh and thus, well, true. According to the authors of the article, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person’s self-destructive tendencies and/or undermines the other person’s relationship. Ouch, right? Well, yeah. Which is why I would be searching for a means to counterbalance these tendencies in me. And also why the majority of my romantic relationships have been cautionary tales.

But.

Codependency doesn’t stop with romantic relationships. A book I recently purchased by Jan Silvious, aptly titled Please Don’t Say You Need Me, summed things up for me in one simple phrase… codependency is a people addiction. That sentence rocked my world in a way I can’t fully express because I feel that emanating from every relationship (romantic, platonic, professional, familial, etc.) in my life. It hits each point differently and comes in a variety of intensities, but it is there. This need for acceptance. For control. To fix. To help. It’s there. Heck, I’ve struggled with writing this blog as a result. Not enough readers? Clearly, no one wants to read it.

Who cares?

Well… I do. Haha. That’s sort of the point. But I am working on not caring as much. Not letting it stand in the way of my expressing these things for fear of judgment or people being indifferent.

The sad thing is that I can remember being this way from the very beginning. Always trying to make people smile and help out when I could. I used to secretly stay after school on occasion in fifth grade to give our teacher a hug because we were ruthless to that poor woman. Like a pack of feral dogs. She retired after our class. And she deserved the break, let me assure you. But I made sure no one knew I was giving those hugs. Because I didn’t want anyone in the class to give me a hard time. So, while I was doing this kind thing for our teacher, my codependency prevented it from being a pure act of kindness. I have a soft heart for folks who get stepped on and I’m sad to say I haven’t done enough with that because I listened to others giving me grief about it. I feel like this isn’t quite painting the right picture, though.

Being liked is insanely important to me. I don’t even need to know you. A really embarrassing example happened when Lee and I went to Burger King a few months back. We were in the drive thru and I was looking for the 2 for $6 thing on the menu. I couldn’t find it and the young woman working the speaker let me know what the options were. Simultaneously, Lee was trying to tell me something else. So, I missed what she was saying, started to place the order and she stopped me to say (with zero attempt at hiding her irritation) that “Whoppers aren’t available as a 2 for $6 option, as I previously said.” I froze. Immediately, I am trying to figure out when I had been rude because it was an honest mistake. I politely said we would go somewhere else because I was honestly humiliated and then left to go home and cry. Because someone I didn’t know, didn’t even see, had made me feel like I was being rude. It ruined my whole night. And I still revisit it in my mind.

My hands are shaking even typing this because I feel like whoever reads this will think I’m an idiot and write me off.

That’s one side of codependency. Another that has had a place in 90% of my adult relationships is the need to change or fix people. It’s funny because it starts in your mind as being helpful. Of course he doesn’t want to look like that/sound like that/do these things that make him seem less than ideal (usually only in my eyes). These suggestions I am making are for his benefit, duh! I’m so selfless and wonderful!

Ugh. No. I have been selfish, controlling, flaky, superficial and condescending to people. More in romantic relationships than otherwise, but still. When you are constantly trying to make someone better, regardless of your intentions, you are insulting them. There is no way to sugar coat that. Even if it’s something as small as getting them to stop wearing socks with sandals or tucking shirts in to running shorts. Seems silly, right? It is. But it is also you looking at a person you are supposed to love and saying “you are not good enough as you are” and for something so inconsequential that you place their value on a very small scale. I learned this past week at Celebrate Recovery that sarcasm is a form of verbal abuse. I laughed for a split second because I thought they were making a joke and ended up asking about it later because I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I am sarcastic constantly. I can’t count how many times in my life I have told someone that I only make fun of people I like… like that’s some sort of compliment. It’s revolting to me now, thinking back on it. I know that my smart mouth has cost me a few friendships, one of which I mourn deeply and daily.

And, at the core of things, I am still desperate for approval. Now it’s a constant battle to recognize my emotions as logical reactions or codependent reactions. If I were to step back from the situation and give advice to myself, would it be to act as I am acting in the moment? Would I be content with my actions?

It’s all a confusing, frustrating mess right now. Honestly, though, it’s a mess I am ready to tackle. I neither want to live my life controlled by whether or not someone has a positive opinion of me nor do I want to be a jerk to anyone. So that is my story in this moment. It’s changing with each breath and I have a long road of recovery ahead.

Can you imagine the life that’s waiting for me on the other side, though?

Hello, my name is…

Since Celebrate Recovery is a big part of my life now, I wanted it to be the first subject of my daily blogs to discuss. Before I delve into the blessings that CR has brought to our lives, I want to share a story of why I find Lee and I going to CR together a fun sort of irony.

I miss Blossom hats.

Let’s travel back to 1995. I’m a mopey, boy-crazy twelve-year-old who won’t stop complaining that I don’t have a boyfriend. And I’m best friends with an equally boy-crazy, mopey thirteen-year-old whose dad is sick of us whining. So, he hatches a plan to set us up with his girlfriend’s friend’s two sons. Our date… the Valentine’s Day dance for Alcoholics Anonymous. AA events like this are family-friendly, so it’s not completely weird that that’s our destination and all three adults were part of the program.

Tall Boi. Longman Jenkins.

Valentine’s Day comes and we get all dolled up (as much as you do when you’re preteens in the mid-90s), gleefully jump in the back of her dad’s Pinto hatchback and drive to meet the boys. It’s February in Yakima, so we’re already into the dark hours and we don’t get a great look at them as they clamber into the backseat with us. I sat on my friend’s lap despite the urging from the boys that I was welcome to sit on one of theirs. The older boy was very charismatic, super funny and flirty. The younger was the huge, silent type. Being the ever-chatty and outgoing girl I was, I chose the one who also didn’t stop talking.

Spoiler… that was Lee’s brother.

Our story has many twists and turns through the now twenty-seven years since that fateful night in ’95, but I think of it often when we’re at our weekly CR meeting together. We began as friends after going to an AA dance and now work as spouses through our own twelve-step program.

Onto the actual reason for this post.

There are big problems that have existed in our marriage since before we said our vows and have yet to be resolved because we never faced them in a way that would actually conquer them. I should say they exist in our lives in general because they aren’t only marital issues. Lee’s walk is his own business and that’s not something I will share. It’s not my testimony. But I’ll share how we came to CR and my side of things.

We had heard about Celebrate Recovery during the Sunday morning announcements at West Side Church before the program began in that location and I was curious if it would be something helpful for him. My mindset at the time was that his issues needed some sort of program and mine didn’t apply to that. We talked about it a bunch of times and he finally decided to try a meeting. I didn’t know anything about CR then and became anxious when more than two hours had passed and he wasn’t home. I will say that his addiction isn’t something that I was worried he was out doing while I was waiting, but it was more of a concern that perhaps he was having to deal with big emotions by himself and just upset.

So I went to Google for answers. I looked up how long a meeting usually lasts and discovered that it isn’t just going and sitting in a room for an hour while you listen or talk. CR starts with dinner. Everyone eats together and enjoys a time of fellowship because family and support is an important concept in recovery. Then there’s a worship service so you can sing out your worries. Then either a testimony or step lesson for the group to enjoy as a whole. Then you break off into your small groups to discuss the nitty-gritty.

They don’t play around, y’all. Healing takes work and Celebrate Recovery is there to get that work going. I love it. I felt really excited for him when reading about it and then came across the list of hurts, habits and hang-ups that CR deals with. My heart dropped when I read “food addiction” and I immediately thought that Lee shouldn’t be going alone. Maybe I could also find healing in CR. When he came home that night, we essentially said the same thing to each other and I was there at the next meeting.

Have you ever sought help for a problem only to discover that wasn’t the main problem in the first place? Me, too! That first meeting reintroduced me to a word I’d only been passably curious about in the past… codependency. I didn’t understand why there were folks there who included that in their introduction because it sounded like a therapy word that didn’t count as a hurt, habit or hang-up. Well, let me tell you that I was dead wrong. And also, in being wrong, ignoring the biggest problem that has led to all my past challenges, bad decisions and moments of idiocy. Like my diagnosis of Poly-Cystic Ovary Syndrome, learning that I am codependent suddenly put things into a logical focus. And boy do I have some work cut out for me in my steps.

I will say that, without a doubt, I have been a much larger jerk in my life than I ever would have realized before and am immeasurably grateful that I can both atone for my past and prevent that clouding my future.

So.

Hello. My name is Barbie and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ struggling with codependency and a food addiction.

It’s been HOW long?!

Wow, it’s been quite some time between posts. Like… years. Between school, occasionally working and raising a toddler, I’ve been a blogging slacker (although I was getting paid to blog for a bit). This first post after my return to writing will be to sum things up a bit before (hopefully) posting on the daily.

Where to start… I am no longer in school. The more time I spent working on my degree while being a mom, the more I realized that I just wanted to be a mom. I can always go back to my degree later, but I can’t replace the things I miss out on when I’m busy outside the house during these fun years where just about everything kids do is new and interesting. Honestly, I just fell in love with being a stay-at-home mom. Add in my complete disdain for online schooling and you have a very easily made decision to wait on school.

Lockdown and the subsequent mandates/limitations on socializing and such happened just before I chose to put my bachelor’s on the back burner and so exclusively staying home did have its challenges in the beginning. For a brief period of time, I considered becoming a widow. Haha. Seriously, though, our marriage was not in a good place for the first five months or so of quarantine. Facing problems head-on is a great way to get things in the open… but it’s usually more helpful when that is a choice made and not forced due to a lack of options. But we made it through and have been doing better as a team than we ever did, even in the beginning.

Especially now that we are tackling the things in our lives that cause the big problems. I’ll do a separate post about Celebrate Recovery and how it’s working for us, but just know that joining a Christian twelve-step program has begun to change things for us in ways that have brought hope into places we previously viewed as hopeless. CR definitely earned its own post. I will answer the one question I’m frequently asked, though… I am working through codependency (which is basically a people addiction) and a food addiction.

This is my Pokémon trainer look, according to Cora.

Around my 39th birthday, I realized how much I truly love crafting and creating organized, beautiful spaces. So, I hatched a scheme to do this for a bit of pocket money and to feel like I’m doing something productive with my hands. Chestnut West, my brand, was supposed to open in October of 2021, but we had quite a few obstacles crop up and I’m still working on getting things off the ground. I’ll do a post on this as well since I’ve had many questions on the whats and whens of my business. But that’s something I’m looking forward to, And I can do it at home while Cora runs amok and potentially gets into doing fun kid crafts alongside me. Including her not only gives her the chance to find hobbies she enjoys and build on her motor skills, but it also prevents what I currently look like while blogging…

So. Let’s say good day for now and I look forward to talking about my life in the day-to-day challenges and blessings to come. Hello again, all. I missed you.