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blahsome · 4 years

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March 18 2020, yet another big milestone. 25 years. A quarter of a century. Is it a big deal or are numbers arbitrary and it’s the same amount of a deal as it ever has been? I can’t publish everything I’ve written down for this year without feeling guilty, but I also can’t step on no toes all the time. And now, I will also feel guilty posting this when there's a pandemic occurring, but, I am trapped at home with little to do other than edit and re-edit this writing to be suitable enough for the public. I started writing this on April 9, 2019, too early to start my 25th anniversary writing? I’ll guess not. So here it is, my yearly open letter to my mother with intermittent ramblings and poems about my experience moving though life as the person I am and my perceptions as a flawed but resilient female. It’s like if I put it out there, maybe I’ll somehow reach her and she will somehow let me know. Highs and lows, as usual. Just after 2 years off the sauce I had a bigger ‘aha moment’ than putting down any bottles, though one wouldn’t have happened without the other. I realized drinking wasn’t my real problem to begin with. It was people, and my desperate need for their acceptance and approval. My need to be recognized and valued instead of coddled and unconsciously kept in a box. My need to control the outcome of situations and stepping on toes in the process. After so long being alcohol free I came to see that I had to start living for me. In early June 2019 a dear friend turned me on to a book called CoDependent No More. In maybe a week’s time I absorbed every word, the narcissist in me was almost convinced that I’d written it myself, it resonated so deeply. The following week I started attending CoDA meetings. Now that so many of my grievances and ailments make sense, I only wish I’d known sooner that it was okay to live life with me as my number one priority. I didn’t know before that I didn’t have to feel responsible for other people’s actions or inactions, but my self worth had been dependent on it. I’m 95% sure my mother was CoDependent, and with that consideration, I’m able to understand her life choices better and therefore navigate my own with slightly better foresight. Wikipedia says “Codependency is a behavioral condition in a relationship where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. Among the core characteristics of codependency is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and a sense of identity.” Now, that’s just one definition. There are many charastics to pick and choose from, and let me tell you, us codependents (I can only speak for myself) can be picky and choosy. Some people define codependency as a disease because if it goes untreated it only gets worse. I’m trying to break a lifetime of habits. Hi, My name is Blossom and I’m CoDependent. Every Monday night I go to a meeting where a group of women gather and we all try to work on ourselves to let go of whatever unmanageable ailments are keeping us shackled. It’s humbling and it fills me with hope. It empowers me to continuously seek change and clarity. Codependency is a tough one to recover from, as you can’t quit people. Once I had a name for this problem, every love song sounded different and every frustration made sense. I became able to recognize crazy making and slow down and see that I didn’t have control and things had become unmanageable. In doing so, I was able to step back and make better decisions for myself and my life and that’s how this whole last year unfolded more in my favor than any year previous. I worked on detaching and I started living for myself. March is a hard month for me. I sometimes feel so undeserving of a skin to be settled in. I writhe around in my persistent and annual grief. I start getting anxious in February wondering how it will appear this year. This March is particularly hard. I moved into a house with strangers and rarely stay there. I’ve got no place of my own to grieve, and with COVID-19 amongst us, I don’t want to take up any more emotional space while the world is feeling its current devestations and fears. My hopes for 2019 were to have more highs than lows, make my amends and reconciliations, and to keep my head mostly above water. And that was mostly the case. My aunt told me shortly after my post last year that my mom had self imposed low self esteem (now I recognize this as codependency). Watching home videos of her I feel like I could see stress in her face and I think about what she wrote in her journal about worry making her face look funny and how she didn’t want anyone to feel as she did. Maybe because it was a different time she felt like she couldn’t talk about her anxieties and had to bottle them up. I’m thinking about all the time I’ve spent transfixed by being a motherless daughter and trying to figure out where I fit into the word. I’m thinking about how long I spent tending to my father's bent and dusty wings, thinking I’d needed to see one of my parents fly so that I could’ve learned how it’s done. I’m in some required college to career success class that’s making me question my path, as if stress wasn’t doing that already. I’m laying in bed wishing that I’d figured out sooner that my wings were fine regardless of anyone else’s. I wish you were here so I could tell you all about everything. And so you could do the same. And so we could share the load. I quit smoking finally. Now my only vice is other people’s problems and trying to fix them to no avail. The eternal heartbreak I mentioned in my last letter makes more sense now. And the boy who told me to turn off the lights on my birthday sent me a podcast that said something about only being able to be loved as much as you’re willing to be vulnerable. And I think we’re all scared to be completely honest about how shitty we are, so we just perpetuate the shittiness and stay closed and unloveable. Early August 2019- I’m off track as usual, probably malnourished, definitely exhausted. This morning I was crying, I thought I wouldn’t be able to pull it together and that my eyes would be red when I got to my first job of the day. I think I was mourning. Things are going to change so much. I won’t have any more free time. I have to restructure everything. Which I think is what I wanted, but what a learning curve. I still have desperate hopes of creating a camp for motherless daughters someday. And it has to be accessible to all. But lord knows how far off in the future it is. At this time my feet are seldom beneath me, I’m sprinting forwards and if I stop I will stumble. I have to figure out my shit first I guess, and I’m putting in the worrrk. Or trying to at least. At a CoDA meeting a woman was talking about learning how to wield her anger, a thought that made me tremble. I liked the sound of it, as I have so much, and if we could turn it into a power, a force for good...it’d be all over. But I’m stifled by it, embarrassed of it. When I cancel plans it's usually because I’m embarrassed about how angry I am over something out of my control, and I can’t come down. Everyone was relatable, everyone seemed to be making progress, even if at this time it looked like a breakdown. They told their stories and I cringed inwardly, thinking of what I would have done in their situation. The time for change is now, I’m shaking in my boots. Some poetry and prose: My broken heart painted my world red slandering your name ensuring I’m to be seen as a fool who sobs wolf My depressed history understands every bit of where you come from like we have the same veins My logical self tells me that’s your burden to bear but I do everything I can to fabricate your crutches and excuse your bad behavior - Codependent Cowgirl Uncharmable. You only want your ex cause you think that’s where you can be yourself, but really that’s where was born the version of yourself you hate the most. Here I am standing strong, aching for my newest weakness. You’re having none of it. If I unclench my jaw and take a deep breath Tears roll down my cheeks THIS is relaxing So I tense back up And jump back into my cortisol spiral There is too much to get done to spend even one second thinking about you Six Sundays have passed since I’ve seen you last Codependency writes all my prose and all my sonnets All my pros and wilted bluebonnets - Go hard or go home Or go hard and stay at home, for forever because you thought you and your home would be each other’s salvation because home was the only thing that ever willingly invited you to change it and was better for it. But home got too heavy and home wouldn’t change on its own. And all the changes you did accomplish didn’t prove your worth. Plagued by nostalgia and sentiment Chronic grief Frozen in grief, and just when I begin to thaw, the temperature drops again Perpetually stressed What if to lose a parent as a child, is to lose the present. Because then you are trapped dreading the uncertainty of the future and wondering about a past you never knew and will never know, theirs. - Fuckless nights I unwittingly dusted off my fiddle strings and played as best as I could but you were never pleased. I was always out of tune or just off beat. -- And so let us not demonize others for our perceived shadows they cast and have casted We can’t all be deciphering your eccentric and elaborate needs when you’re shouting CUNT at the tips of your fingers and claiming to empower women while you dig in your claws to another. Chicken soup wasn’t enough to cleanse your soul. -- I think about you every day Literally nothing happens And I’m reminded of you I wake up I think of you I want to punch a wall I till the dirt I think of you I go on a date I don’t like him I think of you I let myself get so fucked up over you My rose colored glasses are shattered but I’m still wearing them I can’t bring myself to say nothing but nothing I say gets through to you I was operating out of a place Of fear I felt threatened by any number of women I’d never met and will never meet. I saw a message on your phone It confirmed my suspicions You drunkenly tried to explain it away I wanted to believe you but I had already poured the concrete and I cart it with me everywhere Slowly I’m leaving little bits here and there Becoming lighter - This week I wrestled with my codependency, Manic and exhausted from my nervous system vibrating I spent countless hours elbows deep in the dirt trying to find the root of it all An unsolvable problem parallel with reality Hard work makes me stronger Even if I can’t kill all the weeds Progress over perfection What even is progress? fuck my life. I’m no fun at this time. The doors will rot in the yard, my gut tells me just like the others. It’s not even a metaphor, just a strong probability, and a waste. Oh my god the realizations just keep rolling in. For hoarders the drama triangle isn’t just for people, but objects too. The doors must’ve been playing victim, and he’s gone to rescue them. The only corner left for me is The Persecutor. - Back in the thick Texas air Drawn to tough love From best friends to boyfriends Can’t get enough of the push and pull I’m nothing like the others I’m so much more with so much less You make me nervous But I don’t have much to lose I want to roll over and kiss you on the mouth I want reciprocation I want you to push my face away Just to kiss me on the neck You always get me with a twist We are scared of each other Collective hurt Collectively hurt We are missing something and are unable to accept ourselves and each other as we are I don’t know how you can lie to me Or how I can stick around for it For all those times you smash it right I guess Second best to you kissing my neck Is when I’m out of sight but on your mind I don’t fit in to some plan you thought you had I break the mold I’m quiet and bold We are anxious, we are stepping on each other’s toes Bite your tongue For better or for worse Things stay the same But with time, and your tongue between your teeth Eggshells are everywhere, splintered into our feet Make it up as you go along Keep the gas on I’m filling the space between my eyes and my rose colored glasses with wool - Same as ever Tongue between my teeth Lighting up another 100 out of 10 You wonder if you know me But you don’t give yourself the opportunity I’m right behind you writing my words that my teeth won’t allow my tongue to speak Desperation is such a drain Self inflicted low self esteem A familial affliction Looking like a 10 Feeling like a dud That low self esteem has me trembling And today was a good day - With a bottle of booze as his gate keeper He’ll never let me in I’m flushed, way too in my head Thinking up scenarios to catch you with your hands red bloodied from tearing my heart out and probably hers, too. - When I first quit drinking I felt this temporary empowerment, like I always had my wits about me. I could do anything. And then my codependency cloud settled back in, my intuition slipped back out the window. Now it’s like I’m in the desert, with a paddle, which makes even less sense than being upstream without one. It takes so much energy for me to state my needs. I’ve lived much of my life being brushed off and I predict rejection of my needs and so I try to suppress them and be ok with things as they are, but I need more. When I’m cancelled on, or am not prioritized, I need to be provided with alternatives or I feel insignificant. Reminders of my stated needs feel like nagging. I need reassurance. It’s exhausting and disheartening. -It’s the little things like when I ask if you want to do something and you tell me what you’re doing instead, without offering any alternative. Or when you tell me nothing. And I have visceral feelings that to inquire is to overstep and overstepping leads to termination. When I’m doing better I don’t write as much. Pain is romanticized, joy is foreign to me and perceived as fleeting. I’m trying to flip that script. Going to CoDA helps me in this effort. It reminds me that there is space for me and it's ok for me to have needs and taking care of myself should be step one in all of my endeavors. It's ok to say no. I don’t owe anyone anything, and also no one owes me anything. I’m closer than ever before to becoming the butterfly out of the cocoon, though I'm still very far, and that's okay. Progress over perfection. Now wash your hands and stay safe. If not for you, then for your loved ones, or your friends friends loved ones.

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