Aware

When I was eighteen, my first girlfriend's life was always in crisis. She was out on her own, with a crappy $500 car and a job as a waitress. I can't remember how many different places she lived during the time we dated. I would save her but nothing ever seemed to change. She broke up with me when I was away doing a 9 month college internship in another city.

When I met my ex-wife she was living at home and failing high school. I convinced her to study helped her get her GED and she went on to college. She stayed with me long after she stopped loving me. She left me when she didn't need me anymore. Looking back, I felt her lack of need long before. It is what made me feel unhappy in the marriage.

It is a pattern that has played out all my adult life, over and over again. I was blissfully unaware of it. Even as I began to see the pattern I was not fully aware of what it meant about me-- until now. Ignorance of the law may not be an excuse but I believe ignorance of your motivations can be. When we are dealing with ourselves things are not that black and white.

When you do understand, when the veil is lifted and you see yourself-- when you see what you are doing to yourself you are left with a choice-- change or continue to repeat the pattern. It is not really a choice because the pattern has left me empty, depressed and broken. So I need to change. It sounds easy but knowing what is wrong does not mean you know how to do things right.

In my case I am left with a void. A void I need to fill. With little experience. There is no one that needs me more right now then me. It is not fulfilling the way it is when I help someone else. I don't know my answers.

The Onion

I have been forced to peel back the layers and examine my motives, examine what drives me-- to the brink of insanity. It's funny, the layers unfold, clinical analysis leads to irrefutable truth. I have a co-dependent personality.

#1 fed right into my disorder. Her issues mirrored mine so well I could not help but become addicted. Now comes the hard part, striving for something different. I've had dysfunctional relationships all my life. I don't know what healthy is like. I am not sure that I will respond to healthy.

Then there is still the past. When I peel back the layers of the recent past what will be at the core? I want there to be something. I want it all to make sense. You'd like it all to mean more then just a lesson in failure.