It is hard to believe that I lived a life without a self that I had disappeared from my life and had not even noticed it, for I left my life before I had a life.
Without knowing I got a life of my own, I spent all my time in other people’s business, leaving my own life quite vacant.
I simply didn’t live a separated life.
The biggest part of myself was lived in the midst of other people’s world, what I meant to them, how I made them feel, I was an interchangeable part to them.
I was a piece of them.
When I latched on to a person who needed me, I came alive.
Set me alone…I had no value.
Having zero value by myself left me very much dependent upon others, hence the word co-dependent, for my sense of self.
Finding a self that stood alone was near impossible.
I had no definition if the words sister, mother, daughter, wife, friend were not around.
Who was I to myself?
I wasn’t as good a friend to me as I was to my friends, nor did I mother myself as wonderful as I tried to mother my children, nor was a good partner to myself as I was to my husband.
In the end all my efforts outside of myself left me completely empty…for I ignored my self while taking care of others.
Imagine 46 years with nothing to show for my self.
My self had lived silently still while I toiled in people’s lives.
It is like weeding and tending a garden that you are unable to eat from, leaving you starving while they enjoy the crop you took care of.
Slaving over their fields while my own was over run from neglect.
What freedom came when I understood we are all gardeners of our own lives, that each of us can plant the kinds of things we love, and pull up and out the things that prick us.
I love my life now that I see it as my own little plot!
