will the codependent girl in the corner please stand up and raise her hand? do you all see my hand? well it’s up there. it’s raised uncomfortably high and waving ever so gracefully. it’s saying here i am. of course it has a friend pushing it up at the elbow, saying that’s it, put your hand up.
today j and i went to lunch and we had a little chat about my codependent nature. the conversation started because we went to this great but expensive little place that reminded me of a place that d and i frequented. it was similar to our “date day” place. she went on to say how she wanted to start doing different things with her fiance and i went on telling her that it was a fun thing to have “date days”. she mentioned that when she was single she would find things to do like going to the beach or window shopping or whatever may suit her for the day. she said she enjoyed this “by herself” time and i gave a slight chuckle. she knew what the chuckle was for. she definitely knew that that would never work for me these days. she knew i needed a lot of hand holding.
need another example? well you get it anyways. in a few months i’ll be heading off to a getaway. a nice beach getaway. i will be going with k. by now you may be aware that my closest friend k lives pretty far away and will have to fly to l.a. to meet me so we can fly together to our destination. i already have a fear of flying but flying alone is true cause for sheer panic. it nearly sent me into an anxiety attack in my own bedroom when planning this trip.
i never used to be so codependent. you see back in the day i was able to go anywhere and do anything i felt like and i would do it alone. did you all hear me? yes i said alone. shocking i know considering you are at this very moment reading the blog of someone who has a very select group of friends and can barely get her laundry done without some sort of hand holding by one of those friends. seriously folks, i will go to my mothers or drag a friend with me to the laundromat. it’s very embarrassing. well at least at my age it is. it’s not that i can’t do these things… i am very capable of doing many things but for some reason i now cant do them alone anymore. i’m not really sure what the fear is or where it comes from but it’s there and it’s bad. okay well maybe i do know where it comes from. yup d. he really did me in on this one. he got me so used to having someone with me to help break the ice or keep me comfortable that now i am having to learn to do it all on my own. sometimes i feel like a little girl learning to socialize and speak up, learning to control my emotions, learning to go out alone, even if just to the market. i mean really how do you get anxiety just going to the market? i’m not afraid of who i’ll run into or who i’ll see. in general, i’m. just. afraid. i will admit that this is my new task for myself. i definitely don’t want to be one of those old cat ladies and i really don’t want to become some sort of recluse.
i want to get out and get back on my feet again. i will make an effort to do this. maybe i’ll make a new rule, at least every 2 weeks i have to have alone time and can’t count my lunch break at work as the alone time. it has to be somewhere i’m not used to, someplace new.
H E A R T S T R I N G S 