Introduction
Allow me to introduce myself.
I am a 40 year old, single mother of two. A successful professional. Educated and well-read. Christ-follower. Recovering.
"Recovering?" you ask?
Yes. Recovering.
Not from a dependence on a substance. From a dependence on a person.
Or rather, on the idea of a person..
For the last two and a half years, I have been in recovery from my codependency. From my own disease - for which there is no magic pill or potion - that attracts me to addicts, adulterers and verbal abusers. Attracts me to the kind of people that I had only read about or seen depicted in Lifetime movies as a teenager - monsters under the bed. Certainly not real.
This blog is the result of a still, small voice nagging at me for more than a year now, telling me that this has all served a purpose that I do not yet understand...that rather than being a Scarlet A sewn to my chest, it can be my testimony for you, reader, so that you may understand the things that really do go bump in the night. I find that the more I research these issues - addiction, emotional abuse, narcissism, sociopathy - I find that the stories of the survivors (and yes, believe me - we are survivors, in every sense of the word) have common threads...that their masked partners seemed to all follow a script handed out to them at some secret club meeting.
So this is my story, in pieces. Thankfully, I have always been sentimental, keeping every card, text message, email, and journal entry from the last 8 years of my life with the man who I will refer to simply as 'X2.' I kept them tucked away from our first date in August 2010 until October 2017 - the last time I communicated with him. Looking back on these artifacts now, they tell such a different story to me than they did when they were originally penned.
My hope is that writing this will not only help you, reader, but will help me piece it all together into chainlink strong enough to guard my heart from ever having to relive it.
I am a 40 year old, single mother of two. A successful professional. Educated and well-read. Christ-follower. Recovering.
"Recovering?" you ask?
Yes. Recovering.
Not from a dependence on a substance. From a dependence on a person.
Or rather, on the idea of a person..
For the last two and a half years, I have been in recovery from my codependency. From my own disease - for which there is no magic pill or potion - that attracts me to addicts, adulterers and verbal abusers. Attracts me to the kind of people that I had only read about or seen depicted in Lifetime movies as a teenager - monsters under the bed. Certainly not real.
This blog is the result of a still, small voice nagging at me for more than a year now, telling me that this has all served a purpose that I do not yet understand...that rather than being a Scarlet A sewn to my chest, it can be my testimony for you, reader, so that you may understand the things that really do go bump in the night. I find that the more I research these issues - addiction, emotional abuse, narcissism, sociopathy - I find that the stories of the survivors (and yes, believe me - we are survivors, in every sense of the word) have common threads...that their masked partners seemed to all follow a script handed out to them at some secret club meeting.
So this is my story, in pieces. Thankfully, I have always been sentimental, keeping every card, text message, email, and journal entry from the last 8 years of my life with the man who I will refer to simply as 'X2.' I kept them tucked away from our first date in August 2010 until October 2017 - the last time I communicated with him. Looking back on these artifacts now, they tell such a different story to me than they did when they were originally penned.
My hope is that writing this will not only help you, reader, but will help me piece it all together into chainlink strong enough to guard my heart from ever having to relive it.
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