Part 2: The Dance of Codependency

This dance of shadow and light has been with me since childhood. It was reflected in relationships throughout my early adulthood. I chose the light. I always did. But darkness had a way of finding me.

I fell in love with the light in others and I was blinded by it. It’s like they were the sun and I was the moon. I lived to reflect their light, but we only met in the darkness of night.

I lost my center of gravity in every relationship, either by the forces of fate or the brain chemistry of addiction. I believed love was a limited resource and I was starving for it. I was like an addict in my attempts to feed the void or at least not to feel it.

I modeled the dance of codependency I had learned from my parents, tumbling from one toxic relationship to the next. I fell in love with lost souls like me, flocking to them like wounded birds in an effort to “save” them. I believed that if only I loved them enough, they would love me and themselves.

I set out to find true love and I found my fears instead.

• My boyfriend of five years left me on the eve of our anniversary.
• I fell in love with a man who played hide and seek with my heart for ten years.
• I moved halfway across the country to be with a man who cheated on me three days before I arrived.

I have feared for my life in more than one relationship.

• I was in a karmic car crash with my kindergarten crush. I had loved him for fifteen years. When he told me he loved me for the first time, I fell to my knees and wept. He called me his wife from another life. But he blindsided me like the bus that collided with us a week later.
• I dated a man who was homeless and helped him land on his feet. He had the most violent fits of rage. I remember cowering in my car as he called me the worst names and dared me to end my life. I vomited on my pretty white dress, but I still drove him home.

My last relationship presented me with a choice between life and death. He said he was a black hole and I was a quasar (pure light). He told me in no uncertain terms that I had a choice: I could stay and die, or leave and live.

I fell to my knees and wept for the final time. And then I chose life. I chose me.

I set out to heal my relationship with myself and all of life in the process. I discovered the tools that helped me come home to myself. And now it’s my honor to share these tools with others on my path.