Codependent Daughter

In the book Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie, we are asked:

How would you define codependency? Do you know anybody who has significantly affected your life, somebody whom you worry about and wish you could change? Who? Write several paragraphs about that person and your relationship. Later, read what you wrote. What are your feelings?

Codependency is is living your life based on another persons actions. It is controlling, and makes you feel helpless. For me personally, I sometimes am not even aware of it. It is that powerful. So powerful that I can’t even distinguish a “normal” relationship from an “abnormal” one. I need a book to tell me. Just now am I beginning to be aware of my codependent behavior.

Do I worry about anyone and wish I could change them? Hell yeah. My dad. I worry constantly. I worry if he is going to screw everything up and ultimately lose everything my mom and him took 30 years to build. It’s hard to write about him right now because it makes me so damn angry and frustrated. He’s a real jackass and I want to slap him upside the head.

Ah yes… moments of clarity. For him? Hardly. He used to be up early in the morning. After a night of sleeping off the booze does he come downstairs and say ‘Good morning’. How can you tell he’s not f’d up? His eyes. They aren’t glazed over. His breath. Not like a few fresh shots of morning brandy, but more of a stale alcohol smell. Well that could have been what was left of the alcohol seeping through his pores.

And now, he doesn’t get up till noon. The man smokes like a chimney too. A real hypocrite. Used to freak out at my mom for even carrying an unlit cigarette in the house. Now his bedroom is a regular smoking lounge. Oh yeah… his room. My parents have their own rooms. It’s a wonder the house hasn’t burnt down yet.