I Make the Path

I feel like an emotional yo-yo. Yesterday was awful, and then great, and then nerve-wracking again. I'm being yanked back and forth by what other people decide to do, or given peace when they decide it's time for me to have peace. I'm drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and it's time to take myself back.

It's much easier said than done, though. Being a codependent person means truly relying on others for my sense of worth, my sense of peace, even my sense of being. I've been working on this for years and thought I had gotten better at not letting others yank me around, only to find out that I'm as bad as ever. It's unnerving, but also enlightening to see how much farther I have to go, because at least now I know.

Now I know I'm still being thrown about, that I'm still that puppet on a string. Yes, that's a frustrating thing, but I have to know the string is there before I can cut it, before I can take control of it myself and choose.

In giving others so much control, I lose any and all control of my own well-being, so I desperately try to control anything around me. I have given away my ability to choose for myself who I will be, and trying to replace that by attempting to control other people and their reactions becomes a sort of obsession. If I can make everybody else happy and keep the peace, then the person controlling me will be peaceful, too, right? If I can just take care of everything myself, no one else will have to be burdened or upset, right? If everyone would just do what I say, they would be happy and safe, and so then I will be happy and safe. 

 Because my well-being is fully connected to the happiness and peace of others.

What an exhausting existence.

So, I've given myself some homework: choose happy.

  • I choose happy even when he changes his mind on things we've already agreed on. I already got through it, I can get through it again.
  • I choose happy when the kids are upset that they're not in their own home right now, because it means we are moving on.
  • I choose happy when I have no idea how to fix the problem, because it's not my responsibility to fix all the problems.
  • I choose happy when everything is going well in my world, not because other people are allowing me to be happy, but because I CHOOSE to be.


Of course, I will not always actually feel happy. I will have moments where I feel overwhelmingly sad. I will have moments of anger and fear. I will have moments of confusion and frustration. I will have moments where I feel joyful and invigorated. But, when I am feeling affected by others around me and slipping into that place where I am losing my grip on me, I will say to myself, "choose happy," and I will remember that it is my choice,
not his
not hers
not theirs.
Mine.

It's time to truly, once and for all, take myself back.


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