He forgives me

On untangling the ties that bind

“You can't break the ties that bind,” says The Boss. And don’t I know it.

I’m working with a new therapist, after not having been in therapy for many years. I had sworn off it, actually. It had begun to seem tedious and endless, and I never really did the work anyway, so what was the point? Plus, I was beyond tired of talking or thinking about the past. I was like, No. I want to live in the present! That’s behind me. I’m moving forward.

That’s what I said. That’s what I thought.

But, I wasn’t moving forward. In fact, I wasn’t moving at all. In fact, I’m frozen. Even worse, I’m not even occupying my body much of the time. Instead of frozen, I’m more like the shell of a body that is hollow inside, sort of like those disappointing chocolate Santas that crumble into thin pieces when you unwrap the foil. The Self (the center, the interior, the substance) has disappeared.

This must sound weird and cryptic.

You see, I’m learning about co-dependence, and you know what? That shit is bad.

My new therapist Leo is helping me understand and navigate it. He calls it an addiction, like any other. He says first we will understand it and work to identify the patterns. Then, we will stop the behaviors. And then, we will work on how to avoid relapse (using the Gorski Relapse Prevention Method, no less).

What is co-dependence, you ask? Even Substack doesn’t know. The app stubbornly attaches a series of green dots under the term both with and without the dash. So, Substack doesn’t know either.

I’m not sure I can define it. Apparently it’s hard to define. And yet important. The most important thing to know about co-dependence is that is robs oneself of one’s Self. That is the truth. I know it because I feel it.

You see, someone with co-dependent tendencies has been conditioned by trauma (often addiction or mental illness in the immediate family) to put others’ feelings and situations before their own.

Now, to me, when I had but a dim—the dimmest—understanding of this term (and mostly dismissed it), I thought, Heck, that’s the hallmark of a generous person. What’s wrong with that? Especially in a world of so much self-involvement.

What I didn’t understand is that the co-dependent person does this to such a degree that they literally rob themselves of their own life experience and agency. Lofty things like dreams perish, but so do quotidian moments of all kinds.

For example, walking with my moody son the other day, I was convinced I was somehow the cause of his distress (I wasn’t).

I thought, it’s mid-day. Ryan is usually in a hurry mid-day because he’s working so hard. So, of course, we’re in a hurry. Go, go, go! Get Ryan to the better cafe as quickly as possible so his mood doesn’t worsen!

I was literally in a panic, and doing all I could to “act normal.” I was utterly unaware of the walk itself, of my experience, of my plans (for example, I brought nothing to read at the cafe), of my reality or intention or anything.

I was like a lunatic on speed, consumed with the notion that I had annoyed my son. And my subsequent efforts to lighten his mood only served to make good and sure that I DID annoy him.

See why this stuff is complicated?

When I told my therapist this story, he said, simply, “Next time, remember, you can check in…”

Check in? What did that mean?

“You can ask him, ‘Are we in a hurry?’ That way, you would have known, and you wouldn’t have invented this whole story about how you were wrong, bad, had caused this…”

Oh.

I can check in. Wow. Who knew?

I feel like a toddler.

I began this post with the proclamation, He forgives me. “He” is my mentally ill ex- who now lives in Caracas, Venezuela with his family of origin.

He was replying to my What’s App message that Jim Carrey’s Pet Detective is great, and I was sorry I’d ridiculed him for loving Jim Carrey.

If this sounds a little peculiar, that’s because it is.

Another hallmark of the co-dependent is that they feel guilty for everything. There is nothing that is not their fault.

How exhausting.

My mom was this way too. She was not only the main (and most terrifying) addict in my family, but she was also, I’m only now realizing, a co-dependent, because, of course, HER mom was an addict (pills and alcohol) who terrorized HER childhood.

Observing her on the couch for a week weeping in front of the TV as the news played and re-played the exploding shuttle forming a “V” in the sky, he remarked, dryly, “Your mother thinks she caused the Challenger disaster.”

Back to my need to apologize. Why was I apologizing to my ex- about something so ludicrous?

You see, it wasn’t so ludicrous. It was a symbol.

It stood in for all of the times I had disregarded and ridiculed my partner, the father of our amazing children.

It stood for all of the times I had criticized him. It stood for the times I was beyond obnoxious, forcing him to re-measure the oats because I was certain he hadn’t measured them correctly. Or lambasting him for setting the table for a party with the “wrong” linens.

I hate myself for these things.

I was unhappy, desperate, out of control. Scared.

But, being co-dependent, I go too far. I believe I caused his mental illness. I believe I was his last, best chance for a normal life, and I took this from him. I not only believe this, I know it to be true, in my bones.

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. I learned that something I had felt bad about and blamed myself for for decades wasn’t true, wasn’t the case, was an invention, a distortion.

This was incredible. It is incredible.

I met my old friend Richard for a piece of square, crispy-bottomed, Roman-style pizza and a glass of rose at Case Barotti on College Avenue. During our conversation, he brought up his former girlfriend Karen, the woman he dated before me, who was sleeping with another guy named Josh.

I said, “I feel bad about telling you about Josh. I feel that wasn’t the right thing to do, and I wouldn’t necessarily have done it today…” (Mind you, this was more than 30 years ago.)

He looked at me blankly. “What do you mean? I already knew about that. Adam told me. He also told me to get Middle-Eastern about it and dump her ass.”

I was stunned. I had carried this—yet another—tidbit of my history around feeling I had derailed the life of a man, taken this woman from him who was important, meddled in his destiny. It wasn’t my business to do that. I had felt bad about it for years.

And it wasn’t even me.

Back to my ex-, to whom I feel a compulsive need to apologize. Back to the ties that bind. And to untangling them.

Okay, so I was unkind. I didn’t understand his challenges. I was afraid. So was he.

I apologize. And I apologize again.

But, there’s something odd about it.

Reading “I forgive you” helps. But not really.

A tangle of issues arises. What is the root of the guilt I feel? Why do I insist on self-flagellation?

Why indeed? Other than being Catholic—and that is part of this, I believe—it must serve a purpose.

And it does. It isolates me from my life. It makes me feel bad about myself. It freezes me. It sends the message to myself that I am toxic. I literally drive men insane, and not in a good way.

But none of that is true.

Leo, my new therapist, said mental illness is not caused like that.

Sure. I know that. But I made it worse. I hastened it. It has to be my fault.

Does making it my fault allow me to feel a modicum of control? Of power?

Because that’s another hallmark of the co-dependent. Terror and the need to control.

Good Lord, I am sick.

Leo said, “Are you willing to do the work? You’re going to have to work hard.”

And I am. I am willing to do the work. I want to feel. I want to feel my own life. I want to find some core of self that remains. She may buried by decades of neglect. She may be wan and sickly. But she’s there. And like my baby buckeye, my baby madrone, and my baby fig, persimmon, lemon, and oak, she can grow, with care.