Oh, if this couch could talk. Let the word go forth that I will no longer be accepting phone calls late at night. "Yeah, right", sayeth the couch eyeing its dented cushion with the cordless next to it. The couch taketh this attitude because it knoweth that I am a total pushover, and some people would translate that word to mean "codependent." The fact that I am aware doesn't always keep me from indulging in habitual behavior. I like the feeling of being needed. That's the honest truth, and sometimes I go there when I shouldn't.
At one time in my life I knew so many alcoholics that I was sure I must be a carrier. And anyway it's only by God's grace that I am not one myself. I just don't have whatever the thing is that makes people crave a drink or forget how many they've had. I like a drink or two, but then I get sleepy. However, there is alcoholism in my birth family and my poor kids have it on both sides. Imagine Scottish, German and French forebears joined to Irish and Russians. The offspring should have been enrolled in some program at birth.
But if we're going wth the disease concept, and not everybody does, I do have the companion-to disease known as condependency. Not counting my first marriage, it started with my friend Sylvia, back in the late 70s. We had been friends for years and it took me a while to notice that the discussion of life issues, which we both had, was getting later and later at night, taking longer and longer, and becoming less and less comprehensible. I never wanted to hang up because it just seemed so cold to cut off the conversation. And after Sylvia there was Shirley, whose alcoholism was obvious to me almost from the beginning, but who had some life-threatening stuff going on. What it took me a while to "get" is that neither of these women, and they're only two of the ones who have had my ear, remembered much of what we had talked about anyway and that I was the one sitting at my desk at work emotionally and physically exhausted.
And now I'm doing it again. Geez, it's depressing to be this old and still doing the same unproductive stuff.
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3 comments:
I soooo relate and empathize with that problem! I too was the one everyone called for their tragedies, especially late at night and especially when they were "high". Then it got to the point where everyone was dumping their problems on me, sober or not, daylight to starlight. I finally realized that 1) there were only 2, maybe 3, who were REALLY my friends, the rest were "emotional vampires" whose only satisfaction came from soul-sucking, and 2) I REALLY didn't give a shit about their problems, I had my own - that they couldn't care less about. To quote "Scrooged" - "Scrape 'em off!" Of course, when you do, be prepared for their outraged fury at your abandoning them to their own fates.
While it is wonderful to feel like the only rational adult, and that everyone still needs me, it is even more wonderful to NOT have that phone ringing, to have the time to do what I want - even if it is to just go to bed at a reasonable hour! The people who truly need me are the ones who are there when I need them, too.
I can relate. Sort of...I guess. Kinda similar.
I'm pretty sensitive to what's going on around me...I can tell when people are hurting. I have a need to make things better, I'm a good listener, I care.
But it's not always two ways, like WC said.
True and true. I think the best we can hope for is to get better at choosing who deserves our time and to be sure that our efforts at helping people aren't really about helping ourselves feel good. I don't ever expect to get all the way there.
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