So it's another night, and I'm going to try to do some more writing.. Figured I'd answer some more questions that the book I'm reading asks me.

1. What neglect and abuse did I experience growing up? This is a hard one for me, I always thought I had a pretty good home life with my mother and father and the like. They worked and took care of me and didn't quite give me everything and tried to give me some work ethic. Not terribly effectively mind you, but the effort was there. But I think I developed a fear of abandonment from them working the schedules they did. Mom worked nights, dad worked days, and I really didn't see a whole lot of either of them. Dinner was an important time, and food is still important to me because of that, I'm certain. But I didn't really have a parental presence most of the time, and I spent a lot of time being lonely. I also had my activities severely curtailed at first, I wasn't allowed to ride my bike up the hill into town, and I didn't have any friends who lived close. Well, I had one, and he uhm... Wasn't worth much really. There's a whole story there that can be told another time. School wasn't so bad, I had my social activities there, though until I got into high school I really didn't feel like I had any friends. So basically I wound up being pretty isolated during the summers. I don't really know how to talk about this, I have a lot of feelings of hurt and abandonment from my childhood days, but I don't think I've really nailed down where they came from. I know that, emotionally, I spent a lot of time feeling alone. I felt like the only person who really understood me that was family lived down in California, and I barely ever saw him. This person was my brother Lucky, yeah yeah, I've heard all the jokes, and what I haven't, he has. So this is a work in progress.. I know that even in this time I felt alone, abandoned, unwanted. But I don't know that it was my parents that were entirely responsible. It's hard for me to see how. I know that I often felt that my ways, beliefs, and hobbies were wrong. Mother always felt that DnD was a horrible evil game, I ended up becoming Wiccan at a young age because something about it appealed to me, I really had no appreciation of anything Biblical based. I'm not really sure how to answer these questions any further, there's a lot of bits and pieces, but nothing that's really straight up 'abandonment'. But abandonment is big in my list of fears.

2. When did I learn to turn my head when I and/or other people were being neglected or abused, and why? Another hard one, I really don't think I *DO* this.

3. Where did I learn that avoiding others was safer than being involved? Is there a point in your life where you can just... teach yourself these behaviors? I didn't have a way of dealing with the pain of rejection, or of constantly being subjected to reminders of seeing the faces of those who did. It was easier to run, to forget, to not think about it. So I did.

4. Where did I learn to control others for my sense of well being? I suppose I learned early on that people can't be trusted to be careful with your feelings, to treat you with love and respect, and when you trust them to give them that opportunity, they fuck you over pretty royally. A disturbing percentage of my relationships have been lost to them being lost to another person, usually one I feel close to and think of as a best friend. I'm actually still friends with one of them, and a strange but strong friendship has been born out of that betrayal. So controlling others, I guess, just became the safest way to protect myself, to keep myself from being made a fool of. Not that it's ever worked mind, because it conflicts with my desire to keep my relationship together. So even if I control and snoop and find, when I object it shakes the foundation the relationship is built on.

5. How did I learn I wasn't good enough or better than others?

To part 1: They always leave don't they? No matter what I do, they always leave. I do everything I can, and I still wind up alone. Usually for another man, so.. Yeah, I'm not good enough to keep anyone in love with me, leaving me inadequate, a temporary diversion.. a stop on their way home.

To part 2: I am god-damned magnificent, magnetic, charismatic, creative, talented, intelligent, and I shine like the sun when I'm happy and in a group of people. Other people seem so god-damned mundane, why can't they see with my vision? I always knew I was special, everyone told me so, and then I was able to make others believe it to. But considering part 1? How special was I really?

6.When, where, and how did I learn to deny my own feelings, thoughts, and needs for the sake of others or, conversely, to demand that the world revolve around me? I don't really know, Another hard one. In my head it just seems like the only way to prove I'm good enough. It seems to me that that's what love is, putting others first to the best of your ability. I always wanted to take care of someone, to let them know that they're the sun and moon and stars. I like feeding people, bathing people, generally tending to people in every way. I want to make the worship of each other part of a nightly ritual, a winding down at the end of any given day. I never understood how this became pathological. I wanted to do this for others, I wanted others to do it for me.

So, today has been kind of a day. It's full of good forward steps, and some terrifying visits from Pandora's Curse. I got in touch with my Therapist today, had a short 30min+ session, and then started talking about arranging regular therapy visits. This is a good thing. But before that, I talked to Mandi for a good 40 minutes, and 10 minutes after. This was.. It's a really difficult thing. Our conversation was easy, friendly. But every moment of it, hearing her voice, made me miss her more, but was also a rapture. We're still friends, if I can hack that. But that's it. When I asked her if there was a chance at all, she said "If there wasn't a chance in hell, I wouldn't be talking to you." She wants to keep in touch, wants to keep talking. But I don't know what that means, and really neither does she. That scares me so much. Because it's hope, and hope is a dangerous thing. My therapist, Kim, told me. "Your job right when you talk to her, is to be there for her. To listen to what's going on with her and her father's treatment. Focus on what she needs from you." and "Be in the moment when you talk to her.". To which I took to mean "Don't worry about the future, just be her friend, and let whatever happens come a day at a time." I'm working on taking this advice. I also took steps to get my schedule rearranged so that my schedule allows me to get to the CODA meetings on Wednesday nights. Little nervous about my first meeting of this type, but excited too. Ultimately, I'm tired of hurting, of getting lost, of hurting others with my Codependent behavior. It's one thing for a relationship to just not work out, it's another for it to be destroyed from within by one of the partners having a disease. ~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm sure I've mentioned this, but if I haven't, I want to express this. All I've ever wanted in my life was to have a wife, kids, a picket fence. None of the elements outside of it mattered. I wanted my partner to be someone I got along with, who didn't just accept me, but loved me for who I was with all my foibles. I feel like I've repeatedly had this taken away from me. Looking at it now I'm wondering how many times I took it away from myself, and after starting to take a critical look at myself, I'm beginning to think that ratio may be pretty high. It needs to stop.

I'm trying to start a journey I should have started nearly four years ago. The one that deals with my issues and my pain, my loss, my fears. I'm going to start going to CODA, it is painfully apparent to me that I am, in fact, Codependent in a pretty severe way. I'm doing this in my blog here because.. well.. Maybe it's part of the codependency thing but I really don't want to feel alone in this. I don't expect anyone to read it, but at least I won't be hiding it anymore. In Chapter 2 of the book, there's a series of questions that ask some pretty serious questions. I figure a good place to start is answering these questions here.

1. Do I control others to relieve my fears? Jesus... I want to say no to this, I really do. But I can't. I look back at my relationships in general, and I realize that yes, yes I do. Or I try to, and if I fail to I get severely fucked up in my head. I ask things of them that address my fears, and get really flipped out if they don't do them. These behaviors, to my knowledge, relate almost exclusively to romantic relationships. I'd like to say that they don't extend to my friendships, but I can't say that with any definitiveness. I don't trust myself to make that assessment. But looking back at my last two relationships, and most glaringly my most recent, I really did try to control her behaviors from day one. At first it was professed to be out of concern for her, but later it became because I was scared, and scared led to hurting, and hurting led to me trying to control my environment so that I could be secure in it. I have a very hard time just letting things be, it seems like when I just let things be, people leave me. But then it's been so long since I've been able to successfully just let things be, that I can't say for sure. But I will say it is this specific behavior that did so much damage to my last relationship, and is what ultimately drove her away.

2. Do I let others control me for fear of their abuse or neglect? I kind of felt like this one was in direct contradiction to the first one, if I did one, how could I do the other. This one is, honestly, the harder of the two for me to admit. I don't like villainizing others, but the thing is, it's not necessarily something they do knowingly. *I'm* letting them control my behaviors with them having any idea that that's what's happening. Instead of talking to them about the behaviors that make me start acting this way, I stop doing the things that make them do this. This may seem a perfectly reasonable response, and in moderation, it is in fact a perfectly reasonable response. I do not necessarily do this in moderation. It'll take a bit of time to really think about this and pick it apart, but I know it's something I do, even when the other person isn't seeking to control me. And it breeds resentment, which cycles back to the 1st question because I don't like resenting people I Care about.

3. Do I adapt or change my behaviors for others? See #2, yes. Doing things that I perceive that will make them happy, make them love me, keep them from leaving me. Again, this is almost purely a 'Romantic Relationship' behavior, my friendships I tend to be outspoken and fearless with my opinions. Though I don't feel very outspoken or fearless right now. And honestly, a lot of that outspoken and fearless may just be bluster. Dunno.

4. Do I validate my value and worth as a person through them? Especially the people I get into romantic relationships with. They loved me, thought I was wonderful and wanted me to be part of their lives. If that changes then I must have changed in some way that is no longer lovable. If I'm not lovable what good am I? And why did they stop loving me? They're so amazing and wonderful it couldn't be them. Then there's another fear, that it isn't me, which means it's just fate, which means I can never rely on any kind of stability in my life. Everyone will leave me eventually, and what does that say about me? Do I not deserve to be loved, to part of someones life till the end?

5. Do I avoid others to feel safe? Yeah, especially after a break-up. But even during the relationship I tend to start withdrawing from my friends to be with my partner. There's nothing inherently wrong with this at first, but I think in the back of my mind is the thought 'If we don't hang out with anyone else, she won't meet anyone else, she won't find out I'm worthless, she won't fall in love with anyone else, she won't leave me'. Which is completely totally unfucking healthy, I know that.

Well, it's a start, and there's definitely some heavy truths in there. They all scare the hell out of me. My understanding is that codependence is a lot like alcoholism, you never really stop being codependent.