The Most Difficult Breakup of All Time
A letter to my ex-lover, aka. Codependency:
Dear Codependency,
I never asked you to be there. You just showed up and became a part of me.
I thought you wanted to be there for me. And it felt good. You were my therapy. You were the missing piece that I was searching for.
I believed the lie that I couldn't live without you. After all, you completed me.
Something was wrong, though. I started losing the edges of myself. Everything started getting muddy. I couldn't see anymore. I started feeling suffocated but I thought I was supposed to ride it out, stick with it. How could something that looked so "right" be wrong?
You did such a good job of appearing beautiful and real.
I believed you were perfect and I desperately wanted your approval. You never asked me to prove myself to you to gain your approval, but I betrayed myself to try to earn it. I thought I wasn't good without you. If you approved of me, that meant that I was worthy of belonging.
I was addicted to you. I was willing to do anything just to get the next fix.
I lied to myself. I lied to you. I'm sorry.
You were always right. I was always wrong. I simply wasn't as good as you. I made everything my fault every time that I wanted to get back on your good side.
Maybe you thought it was "love" to fix me and save me while I just felt controlled and judged. It was never your job to fix me. I never asked you to.
It wasn't my job to give you a voice. But I signed my own voice away to try to give you yours. It wasn't my job to help you show your true colors or help you be your best self. It wasn't my job to cushion your reality. It wasn't my job to complete you.
No matter what I did, I always missed the mark anyway.
The day I finally let go of you, I found my freedom. It felt like chewing my own leg off to get free. I didn't want to let go without taking back everything I had sacrificed, but it was already gone.
It turns out that I'd rather be crippled for life than be caged in. I'd rather be the villain of the story than sell my soul for a counterfeit existence.
You must have realized by now that this is goodbye. We can’t be together anymore.
Thank you for all of the important lessons that you taught me — for it was within your pits of slavery where the strength developed inside of me to break free.
I am who I am. I'm not missing anything. I don't need you. I never did.
Dear Reader, is it time for you to break up with Codependency?
If you’ve never met Codependency, let me give you a little introduction.
Codependency = something that does a really good job of looking like love or a really good friend. But it’s NOT.
Codependency = a psychological dependence of meeting the needs of someone else or submitting to the control of another person. A common symptom of codependency is “people-pleasing”. In many religious circles, codependency does a good job of seeming righteous and even godly! It’s so sneaky and it comes from the father of LIES. It comes from having misinformed views about who God really is.
It’s possible to heal relationships with codependent patterns. But it often takes professional help to navigate this, just like you need the guidance of a doctor or nutritionist to create a healthier lifestyle.
The most difficult breakups that you will navigate in life are the breakups with your own dysfunctional patterns. It is difficult to break free from the addictive behaviors of a codependent relationship, because you will feel so bonded with and loyal to the other person. But if you do not break those patterns or get out of a toxic relationship completely, it will slowly and surely kill you.
There is no shame in coming to the awareness of your patterns of codependency. The only way to stay out of the traps of dysfunction is to heal the wounds that drew you to it in the first place. Discipline yourself to create new thought patterns.
Yes, it hurts. Coming to the awareness of codependency requires an uncomfortable deconstruction of everything that you thought was real love or friendship, a frightful unraveling that will take you through a journey of grief — and it is also the doorway to healing and freedom.
Don’t be afraid of the shadows, my friend. Surely goodness and mercy walk with you, even in the dark.
Pain is never the end of the story; your story isn’t over yet. You will see the sun rise once again, with new mercies that are waiting there for you.
