Who are they?

Codependence is at the root of all my addictions, and it is what so often keeps me cut off from my HP. Because I want to please and control and manipulate everyone around me, I am not true to myself or with anyone else. Eventually this leads me into the arms of some stranger or into the cookie jar. I want everyone to like me, I want to make them love me. I want to make sure they don't get angry or upset, that I don't disappoint or discourage them. I give myself an enormous amount of ego-driven power, which makes it very hard to submit to my powerlessness and turn my will and life over to a power greater than myelf. What??? A power greater than me? Are you kidding? Haha.

I almost drive myself bonkers every year writing a Christmas letter to our friends and family painting the perfect written picture of the perfect year filled with traveling and work accomplishments (or our latest move). But as I write about travels, I spend time thinking -- "Oh no, this person will get upset because we didn't see them while we were in the area!" "Oh no, that person doesn't like that person and we can't let them know we associated with them!" It just goes on and on, when the fact of the matter is that people may not really give two hoots about where we went or what we did ... and the whole sum of the letter doesn't add up to one thing truly important. But EVERYONE (my ego again) expects our letter every year and we just HAVE to send one.

During a meeting yesterday, members, including myself, spent some time in discussion about how we fear judgment, how we always have to live up to what "they" might think? But when I stop to think who is this mysterious "they" and "everyone" and how truly important are they really ... compared to my recovery, compared to the things I actually struggle with each day, to the true achievements in my life (which sometimes just include making it through the day sober or even alive) ... "they" are not really that important.

What is important is that I can keep the focus on myself -- not on changing others, saving them, controlling them, manipulating their thoughts. I can examine my life daily and learn to recognize and examine my feelings, be true to myself, and do my very best. Improving my concious contact with God is critical to my recovery and to hope in my life. I cannot connect to the higher power I call God if I am always putting someone or something else before him in my mind.

In the struggle to live with the disease of addiction (whether to people or food), God is my only hope. The "theys" that I put in the way are my path to continued destruction.

One day at a time.