The Spice Must Flow.

Recovery isn't an event. It's a process. All too often, I've found myself wanting whatever it was I thought I needed immediately. The idea that I'd have to finally sit down and commit to something scared me shitless. What's more, the idea that I'd be doing it for the rest of my life was a dismal realization...initially.

I'm a fighter. I've been, throughout the course of my life, fighting to fit in, to belong, to be loved. I've spent almost 29 years fighting. Look where it has gotten me. Recovery is a process. Not only is it a process but it is also a series of surrenders.

I've told myself one thing for the last ten years: Never give up. Keep getting out of bed, pull yourself off the bathroom floor, get yourself to do whatever it takes to get back into the fight. But what is it I was fighting for? Never giving up has it's virtues...but what is it I'm not giving up on? I've told myself for years that what I was fighting for was a happier and more peaceful life. With someone to share that experience. But fighting to have something or someone you aren't ready for is like trying to stop a wave from crashing; the water will always find a gap in your defenses.

When I think about not giving up, it seems less virtuous and more self-defeating. I realize now that the voice telling me not to give up on finding the perfect woman, being loved without condition, finding a place to call home was, in fact, my addiction talking. Codependency is a subtle killer. Unlike alcoholism or sexual addiction, codependency creeps into your mind like a weed and leaves a dandelion in it's place. You think it's a flower but past the petals, stamen, and earth there is still a killer inside.

When I told myself to never give up I should have been listening to the rest of that sentence. With my growing awareness of codependency it probably would've been something like “never give up...or else you'll have to acknowledge this pain. You will have to recognize who you really are so never give up fighting because the pain of remembering is far worse than knowing and not feeling” (Shaughnessy, 2012, frontal lobe, pg. 185).

Anecdotal comedians will joke about people with “commitment issues.” Commitment is synonymous in our culture with relationships, love, bro/romance, marriage and so on. When I think of commitment now, I notice that my definition and understanding of it are gradually changing. Commitment is the genuine desire to have a loving relationship with ones own self. Commitment means, in my eyes, abandoning the belief that someone else can make me happy. Commitment means devotion to myself without reservation.

To Thine Own Self Be True.

I've written about fear before; the energy it takes to make fear-based decision making. This is inexorably tied to commitment, they truly are opposing emotional forces. This does not mean they are autonomous from one another, only that they cannot co-exist in a healthy manner. They're like two neighbors who know one another but secretly dislike each other. Commitment means embracing and then freeing ourselves from fear because that is exactly what has hindered the evolution of our emotions. Conversely, if we choose to embrace fear alone, we abandon the prospect of commitment (that is, in relation to ourselves).

I've always hated commitment. It means doing everything the hard way and only slowly getting results that are often vague and hard to discern at first. When my ex and I broke up, the fear, the addiction within me, screamed out for a substitute. Something tangible, something fast and easy. Something to keep me from delving into the pain. In my case, it took a type of emotional deprivation tank to force me to commit to myself.

It would have been very easy to replace my ex. It would have been easy to replace my fear of abandonment with someone else's feelings because there's no easier way to feel better about yourself then to please another...right? I'm a people-pleaser, a care-giver as it's referred to in CoDa (Codependency Anonymous). Being a people-pleaser means sacrificing things such as my integrity, morals, or genuine feelings in order to please another because the fear of losing this person, if I choose to be myself, is far more powerful than being alone with that pain.

Gift-giving, canceling plans to accommodate the higher power we've created, abandoning personal interests, sex when we wan't love; these are all ways I have tried to be the consummate caregiver. It's simple when you have so little self-esteem to continuously give up pieces of yourself. But if I can just show you for a one night that there are redeeming qualities within my facade that you find appealing, then I've found my fix. It's like that Nine Inch Nails song, “You are the Perfect Drug.”

But this kind of love, these kinds of relationships have an expiration date attached from the moment they begin (just think about any rebound relationships you've ever had).

There's a great book by Frank Herbert called Dune. A young man, Paul, prophesied to become the Muah-dib or leader of his people must undergo a trial called the Gom-Jabbar. Paul must place his hand inside a box all the while a seer has a needle pressed against his neck with a poison that will kill him instantly if he flinches from his trial.

Paul's hand is, for lack of a better word, incinerated within the box. The bubbling of flesh that sloughs it's way off to reveal meat and ivory bone is a tangible image in Paul's minds eye. But there is a credo Paul recites over and over again while he envisions his hand melting, the threat of death pressed against his neck. "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear's path, and only I will remain."

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear kills our rationality. Fear blinds us to the mistakes we have or are making. Fear kills our sanity and, in a sense, renders us insane. Synonymous to insanity is drooling inmates with straight-jackets. That is mental illness. I'm talking about losing control of our selves. When we let fear govern decision-making, we lose sight of our own ideals and goals. We abandon the prospect of a life full of joy even if it's spent alone and in solitude. Fear will do anything it can to survive which has served it's purpose in humankind’s ancient past. The “fight-or-flight” reaction of heavy breathing from the chest and adrenal glands pumping battery-acid into our veins has it's place when confronted by a predator three times your size. But like all things humans interact with, the environment becomes a reflection of our current cultural and emotional zeitgeist.

The predators we fear now are not saber-toothed nor are they mythical unknown beasts we cannot understand. The predators of the now are bills stacking, an unfulfilling relationship, a friends choice to not be a part of our lives. The prey of the 21^st century are the intangible and insatiable appetites we are conditioned from day one to want. Our Great Hunts don't rely on bringing back deer slung over our shoulders. We've opted out of that for drunken coupling that still requires some kind of carrying of one another to the bed.

When I found myself in this very position a few years ago, I let fear take the wheel. I let insanity be my guide and I externalized my hopes and dreams on the off-chance that I had just had a one-nighter with “The One.” The wisest thing to do would have been to say “that was a good time, nice knowing you.” But when two codependents wake up pretzeled around each other; it's pretty easy to mistake desperation and fear with love.

Inflicting pain is easy when you're insane, you just act. The rest follows suit. Months dragged on with this woman who was wonderful in all sorts of ways. Kind and gentle, she accepted me despite our significant age difference and made an on-going effort to see me during our time together. When she dropped me off at the airport, she started to cry. I was so surprised, but so was she. Like myself, the idea of giving up was a thousand times more harmful than to continue fighting. It's so much easier to simply stuff those emotions down because we let ourselves believe that those feelings are abnormal.

It ended like most of these kinds of relationships do; poorly. Fear is the mind-killer. It robs us of our sanity to make decisions that benefit ourselves, even if that means causing another person pain in the process. Fear deprives us of the opportunities we deserve if we'd only shirk off the shackles of desperation. Fear takes all the things we deserve and makes us feel inadequate and undeserving of them.

Once we've lived this way for long enough, it becomes normal. It certainly did for me. Codependency is a subtle killer, moreover, it's an addiction that replaces the need to nourish ourselves with the insatiable and never ending desire to please others; believing that we simply are not worth the same effort we lavish upon others.

To commit means to be free of fear. Or, if nothing else, to take the first steps towards that goal. When we commit ourselves to a cause that is for our own good, we can find peace because at the end of the day, you are all that you have. I know that sounds bleak but I mean that in a very realistic way. We don't have control over others so it behooves us to be kind to our minds. To commit to taking better care of ourselves which may require saying goodbye to the one thing or person we are convinced will make us happy.

I don't know where the strength to make the first step towards committing to healing myself came from but when I told the person I cared the most for in this entire world that I couldn't speak with her, I felt...terrified. It was my addiction rearing it's head once again. Pleading for me to take back those words, to stop erasing photos of us together, begging me not to place all the things we had together in a box and then have my father hide them so I could never find them on my own. And, trust me, I looked fucking everywhere for that damn box in those first few weeks.

Strength, serenity...those are things that are already inside of ourselves. They never were and never will be within someone else. It isn't anyone’s job to make you happy. When we take the advice of those who have gone before us, when we are ready to finally listen and not simply hear, then the teacher appears (in my case it was a rowing machine so....you know...shit's weird sometimes).

I'm nowhere near free. Fear has taken ahold of me time and again today. The “what ifs?” and all the unknowns that are so damned intrusive. We do this to ourselves. No one is telepathic, no one is projecting shit-images into your mind so it's important to own up to our own self-flagellation. It's best, I've found in times when my mind begins to make a rolling snowball made of shit to simply admit to the one thing I abhor and that's this: I simply do not know.

When we can admit that we do not know what he or she is doing, when we can be okay with uncertainty (or as I like to call it, “Diet Fear”), then we've made another step towards healing.

I'm no guru, just some guy with great friends and the immense blessing of a second chance but I do know this if nothing else: Fear cannot exist inside the hearts of those who wish to be free of codependency.

-Ian