Why Me?

The night was smoggy and wet, as I sat in the parking lot. I could feel my face swollen as my hands covered my unsightly face. Pain shot down my arm like a surge of dire energy. I could feel the pain travel through my body like a hurricane through my veins. I wanted to make the pain go away, as much as I wanted to make Him go away. But I could not bring myself to do it. There I sat, tasting the bitterness of my own blood slowing dripping out of my split lip. To this day I still wonder why I forced myself to sit there in the parking lot, alone and cold.

It is amazing to me now that I can look back on the relationship with the exceptional clarity. I can distinguish now that I would have never been in this situation had I understood more about myself. About halfway through a one-year relationship, I asked the question: why do I always find myself in such emotionally draining, unhealthy relationships? Only half of the answer was to be realized at that time.

I was a “pleaser.” A person who cared so deeply for this person in need that I wanted to become His personal champion: taking care of Him to the point near mothering, trying to alleviate His problems with my love (although they needed intensive psychotherapy), and wanting to teach Him to become a better person. Feeling like it was my duty to mold him into a better person. In this first moment of realization I knew that I did not want to live or love this way. I deserved better. It was not my responsibility to make Him “okay.”

Half way through the relationship on a dark smoggy, wet night, There was a faint tapping on my window. I rolled over to look at my clock, it read 2:36. I slowly rose from my bed to see what the tapping was. I could barely distinguish who was below my window, but there He stood in the dark. He summoned me down, by saying that he missed me. Once I reached outside He firmly grasped my forearm and pulled me into his car. There I sat shaking in his car as we drove to someplace that I didn’t know. I quickly glanced at the clock in the front dash, 2:56. He stopped the car in an empty parking lot with a sole light source was coming from the car dashboard. Silence stood still in the car as he spout words of anger towards me. I sat there scared as his callous fist came fast towards my face. And made contact with my lip. Pain shot through my face and I could taste the blood between my teeth. My mind went blank as he continued to shouted words at me. I went to get out of the car and he slammed the car into gear. Throwing me out of the car like a rag doll, I slid across the rough pavement. There He left me stranded and broken.

I was in the search for answers, while I was alone. Why was this happening? I thought I needed him. And I wanted to “please” Him. As I poured over this information, as if suffering an asthma attack and desperately struggling to find the air I needed to survive, I became angry: angry with Him for the way He had treated me and angry with myself for allowing it.

Today I understand that His behavior towards me stemmed from a need to control me: the way I thought, felt, behaved, and with whom I associated. He achieved control through many different forms of psychological abuse, including implied threats, verbal attacks, and unrelenting criticism. He also utilized more subtle methods of denial, such as blame shifting and rewriting history. In situations where the psychological manipulations did not work, He secured his control through physical violence: implied, threatened, and real. Yet, through all of this newly gained knowledge, the most painful realization of all was recognizing that I was codependent.

Just the word “codependent” makes me cringe. I have always known myself as a strong and independent