How Much Do I Miss Co-Dependency?

I woke up feeling sad and missing co-dependency. In the old days, the early days of my relationship, I'd wake up feeling oogy and one or two things would happen.

1)I would make it my partner's job to make me feel better. What could he do to make me happy? What ideas did he have that could fix me, heal me or at least distract me? Could he perk me up or escort me to the bookstore? Could he dive into the pool of my healing and keep me company? Could he stay there as long as I needed? Could it be him who could tell me when to swim, float or get the hell out of the pool?

Yeah, those were the good old days. My moods weren't my own. I was generous. We shared them. My mood was a food dye coloring our time together. So what if I wasn't the least bit lonely... or healthy...I miss it.

2)The other scenario for a bad post-traumatically stressed out kind of day was to wake up sad or oogy and quickly shift into pissed off. Pissed off at him. If he would just do/be/say/realize whatever, I would feel/be/seem "better" - this mindset would usually create a fight. The fight would end with me in tears. The tears would make me feel better. Then I'd want to go do something fun like maybe see a movie since I felt so much better. Funny, him feeling trampled by my "stuff" made him feel lousy. But it took me a while (and him too) to realize we were in a pattern.

So today, forgetting how I would make him feel bad, I had to ask, "Why is co-dependency unhealthy? I need to be reminded because I'm really missing it." What I was missing most was the part where I picked a fight, cried and felt better - fast. It was so much faster than journaling or meditating or sitting with my feelings.

He laughed. He smiled.

"No, you really have to remind me why that's not a viable option anymore because I'm REALLY missing the effectiveness of that path."

"Because it's not healthy, mature or adult," he said.

"Well you don't have to be nasty about it," I said knowing I should have asked someone else not the person who had lived with my less than evolved self for a long time.

"Oh yeah," I said, "The whole how I impacted other people, the not spilling my crap on others, the figuring it out for myself and being mature. Yeah. Yeah. The being considerate, responsible, etc. etc."

"You got it," he said.

"Damn. Damn. Damn," I thought, "So if I need support you can't just intuit it and figure it out?" But at least I didn't say that part. It's just hard to be an adult now and then. I feel better AFTER I cry but the feeling that I need a cry isn't something I usually welcome. I'm learning. I'm learning.

So, for today, it's confessions of a co-dependent. If I didn't care about hurting the feelings of others I'd go right back to picking fights, shutting people out and making them come seek me out. But no. No. Who knew self-awareness and healing and maturity would be so complicated?

Dear co-dependency, you are missed and when I let you go I had no idea how important you were to me. I now have more understanding for addicts who can talk almost romantically about the booze or smokes or whatever they once enjoyed - before they caused so much damage...

It's a drag sometimes to be self-aware enough to know what not to do but not so healed there's a super efficient plan B.