On my birthday last week, David and I went swimming in Walden Pond. It’s the most idyllic setting to swim–beautiful green trees, a large lake with soft, cool water, hundreds of chipmunks huddling about on paths trying to dodge feet that come trampling through. And it’s the former home of good ole Henry David Thoreau, legendary American author, naturalist, and philosopher, best known for his work, Walden (named after the pond, no doubt). After our swim, David and I walked over to the plot of land where his little house used to sit. There we looked up to read these immortal words, carved into a stone beside the little square of dirt: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” To which David promptly improved on by proclaiming, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliciously,” and tossed another handful of barbecue corn nuts into his mouth.

Now, a week later, that phrase (Thoreau’s not Thaggard’s) “to live deliberately” comes to mind with an odd new meaning for me.

A few weeks ago I attended a retreat in West Cornwall, Connecticut. It was a personal/spiritual retreat for 5 days. I went alone, to join up with a group of people who also wanted to have a cleansing session with God and from their environment. It was wonderful to be out on my own, something I haven’t often done since I’ve been married. I really enjoyed not feeling pressure to be friendly with anyone because I didn’t know anyone. I went there for me and I was going to spend time with me.

On the second day, we were asked to take a self-test; “Am I codependent?” it asked. I read the title and thought, “of course not.” But as I answered “yes” to many of the questions I began to wonder two things. First of all, what does codependent even mean? And secondly, am I codependent and if so, is that soooo bad? I finished my quiz and kept the idea in my head that I could be. The test told me that if you answered 5 or more questions with “yes,” then you should probably consider that you might have codependency issues. I had 17 “yes”s. I put away my quiz, determined to ask one of the retreat leaders about it at a later time.

In my small group time the next day, I did a sharing my story, of sorts, and a theme arose in my sharing time. I take responsibility for things…I’m a good friend to have in crisis b/c I’ll work hard to fix it, and I’m also a good friend to have b/c you can depend on me…I’ll do it for you even. Also, I tend to think that things are my fault. I’ve known this but it was interesting to see that this thread of taking responsibility and being responsible wove through my life; even more ironic, was the thread that braided in beside this: powerlessness. I think I have felt very much in my life powerless to change things I see are harmful, bad or hard…yet I try to take on everything so that I can change it. Or better said, I work really hard to change things by taking responsibility and when they don’t change, I feel totally powerless and give up.

On the way out of small group that day, I mentioned my quiz score to one of the leaders. To him, it seemed to fit very much with what I had discovered in group, but I still had my doubts. I didn’t see how I could be codependent and even if I was, how this was bad. So I cared for people. So I cared a whole lot for people…So I become a sort of caretaker to people sometimes when they couldn’t really take care of themselves…So I obsessed and worried about everyone else’s problems…So what?..Isn’t that active kindness?

Besides having some active confirmation of this through the material we were working on, I actually felt better being away than I had in quite a while. It felt very restful for me to be in nature and for me to be taking care of myself alone. I spent more time with God than I have in years. In the afternoons, we’d have free time and I’d go for a walk and pray. At night at the end of chapel time, I’d sit there and let God speak to me. I felt a lot of encouragement and closeness with God and it felt good. I actually had time to just sit with him and put my problems out for him to take, for him to work on, instead of sitting there with an overflowing bucket of everyone else’s problems to give to God. I found that I had a freer mind and a more relaxed body, but of course everyone feels this way on vacation, right?

When I returned, I mentioned the codependency question to my therapist. I told her about feeling responsible and then powerless and how this thread ran throughout my life.  She recommended a book for me to read…Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. I wrote down the title and tucked it away inside my calendar book, inside my purse.

Fast forward to this past Sunday: I was not having a good day. Ever since I got back I’ve been feeling wearier and wearier. I’ve known that I need to pull back (mostly on the inside) from some relationships because I let other people take over my life, and I forget to do what I really want to do. I overworry about people (you can ask my husband if you have any doubts). I obsess over mistakes I make. I think constantly about how to make a situation better. And I get tired easily. And I don’t feel peace on the inside often. Every couple of months I have to take a sick day because how I feel mentally & emotionally starts to take a toll on my body–headaches, tummy tenderness, body aches.

I actually worked on Sunday and so I took Monday off. I went to the library at 9 am, right when it opened and I got the recommended read from my therapist, despite some embarrassment at the library check-out counter. I figured I might as well see if this book could help me out at all. At first the book was quite off-putting for me. It talked about codependent people being manipulative, controlling, blaming, anxious people who were usually married to alcoholics. This didn’t seem to describe me at all. In the second chapter, I found that I could relate to a few different women in their stories even though I have never lived with an alcoholic…for instance Patty tried so hard to make her husband not drink; she worked so hard to keep things safe and together by keeping her husband in line; she found herself tired and weary all the time; she became worried and then obsessed and then frantic that something was about to happen. She tried to control the situation and her husband to keep things from getting worse.
I continued to read yesterday, nearly 100 pages, and felt sadly yet hopefully connected to the ideas and traits the author described for the codependent person. And then…she said something that was really weird…she said, Codependents are reactionaries. They react to others’ feelings, they react to situations, they react to problems, they even react to their own emotions. At this point, they have lost control. They are actually being controlled by the people and the situations around them. Codependents may even find it hard to be in large groups of people, she continued, because their reactionary habit goes haywire with so many people to react to.

And somehow it clicked…it all clicked. I am such a reactionary. My mother and my father were reactionaries too. I react to a missed green light; I react to an upset feeling in my body; I react to a word from David; I react to everyone around me. It’s not bad to react; it’s totally normal in fact, but I think the things about codependents is that their reacting is out-of-control. They react way more than they act and they [we] make decisions in our reactions which is not a very good place to make decisions. It means not making decisions in a calm, peaceful space but making decisions in franticness daily.

I’m still trying to figure out what it all means but this morning as I left for work, I encountered a good example of this. Back story: I’ve been on antidepressants for about two years. Recently I started taking them less and forgetting to take them, and phasing off them (I don’t like being on medicine). I don’t know whether this was a good decision or not, but I started doing it and just went with it–I suppose you could say it was my reaction to the fact that I was forgetting to take them. So this morning, since I’ve been feeling down the last few weeks, I blamed it on my medicine. I decided to take a pill and call my doctor and ask for more. And then I thought about it (taking medicine or not aside)…I’m reacting out of this feeling that I’ve got to get medicine b/c I’m not okay without it. I am reacting to my feelings which are not so happy right now and trying to do something in franticness b/c I fear things getting worse. And just like that, I realized…I don’t have to react; I can act; I can live deliberately.

So I put down my phone, resigning to call my doctor when I’m in a better space. And I headed off to work trying to let this line sink in in a new way…I want to live deliberately…to live deliberately…I want to take control of my own life and live it actively instead of being a buzzer waiting to be sounded; a marionette string waiting to be pulled; a balloon waiting to be deflated; an applause button waiting to be pushed…I want to live deliberately…

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