Accidentally Enlightened
Hello! My name is Catherine and I am a recovering codependent.
Codependency is an acquired mental health disorder, based on social conditioning and upbringing.
At its core, codependency means that I don’t didn’t love myself. I was taught not to. Instead I was taught that to give of myself to others made me a good person, and keeping myself to myself made me a bad person.
I was taught that self-love is shameful; by people who themselves had been shamed not to love themselves.
I’ve had enough. By not loving myself I have treated myself and others badly. No more.
I now practice self-love.
Accidentally Enlightened
On a recent Sunday afternoon I climbed Enlightenment Hill. I call it this because it lies between my home in Rabat and my therapist’s home in Xaghra and it’s a real challenge to climb, both on foot and on my little e-bike that just can’t even on inclines and needs a fair amount of pushing and verbal encouragement. If you’re ever relaxing in the lookout area at the top of the hill and you hear a woman breathlessly singing, “Come on, Deathtrap, yes we can!” - that’ll be me on my way to therapy. I’m also the woman who occasionally hollers, “You go girl!” when I get to the top.
“Triq Il Knisja” translates as “Road to the Church”
So. Last Sunday I put in my earphones and took myself for a walk because I’m in the process of listening to Melodie Beattie’s Codependent No More and it’s brutal. I find that I have to pace myself by listening to a section while walking or crocheting and then practicing self-care afterwards to nurture myself through all the shit that it triggers in me all of the self-recognition and self-ownership that it inspires in me.
I hadn’t intended to climb Enlightenment Hill. I initially went down into the valley and then decided to follow a road to see where it would lead me. It took me between grand villas and pokey farmhouses, across a little riverbed and then up a hill between the fields and before I knew it, I was halfway up Enlightenment Hill, albeit on a farmer’s track and not on the road itself, with Melodie Beattie explaining to me all of the ways that I have become manipulative and controlling and I was so fucking uncomfortable with how much I could relate.
I instantly started doing what I’ve always done; excusing my behaviours because I’ve been traumatised but I quickly snapped that line of thinking because I am now a woman who wishes to own herself and possess herself entirely and making excuses is the opposite of ownership. Making excuses is a form of blame. Blame is disempowering because when I blame, I give a part of myself away. Blaming others for my own behaviours is just as self-destructive as giving too much of myself away by coddling and enabling others with over-caring and over-giving.
I found myself at a dead-end. The farmer’s path abruptly ended among the fields part way up the hill and I realised that I had to make a choice; go back the way I’d come or make my own way across the fields. That’s when I started laughing, because I realised I was in the midst of an epiphany; an “Ah-ha!” moment, and all I needed to do was have faith that All is as it is meant to be and keep going. So I went boldly into the unknown instead of going back the way I’d come, and the universe took it easy on me by providing flat tyre tracks across the fields and a low wall to step over to deliver myself to Triq Il Knisja; the road on Enlightenment Hill.
I admired the view on the way down the hill, delighting in my discomfort, eager for the release of the coming epiphany. I didn’t have the epiphany until the bottom of the hill though. I had the epiphany while watching the ducks in the pond beside the bridge.
Taken from space, this image shows where a middle-aged blonde found herself at a physical and metaphorical dead-end on Enlightenment Hill. I like to imagine my life stories as episodes on Earth TV, watched from above, from space. It helps me to put my existence into perspective. I’m just a tiny Who on a speck hurtling through space and time, here and gone in an instant.
Epiphany Duck
When I reached the bottom of the hill I stopped on the bridge to look at the ducks. I found myself standing with one foot up on the bridge wall, one elbow on that knee, leaning over and staring intently at the ugliest, most fucked-up duck in the flock. It has wing feathers on each wing that stick out at odd angles and are frazzled. The other ducks peck at it and harass it and it always looks unhappy because it’s become a little monster of low self-worth.
I recognised the parts of myself that are mirrored by that duck’s experience.
Oh, I thought as I stared at Epiphany Duck, I’ve been so busy loving other people’s monsters, for them, that I’ve neglected to love my own monsters, for me, because I haven’t allowed myself to.
The Epiphany
I have blamed others for creating the ugly parts of myself. I handed them those parts of myself by blaming them, like; “Here, you made this monster by mistreating me, so now you have to deal with her.” I have also expected others to tiptoe around my monsters, to not provoke them, not trigger them, not point them out to me because I was ashamed of them and pointing them out to me was akin to shaming me.
I had sent my monsters to live with others because I hadn’t wanted them.
I hadn’t wanted to own those parts of myself.
So I welcomed them home, all my bad behaviours, bad attitudes and bad feelings. I welcomed them with the faith that this is as it is meant to be - to be whole in myself I must love, accept and own all of myself: monsters and all.
I walked home then, both physically and metaphorically, made myself a cuppa and settled myself on the couch with my therapy book and wrote a letter of apology to someone I’d hurt in the past. It flowed from me. There isn’t a single mistake in that letter. I didn’t um or ah or cross anything out. I just let it come as it was meant to be; from inside myself out into the world and on to the paper. I brought all the “bad” selves home that I had sent to live with him. I brought home my childishness, my irresponsibility, my peevishness and bitchiness, my disrespectfulness, my neediness, all of my lying, betrayed, bullying, bullied, manipulative, manipulated, hurtful, hurt, angry, broken, shaming, shamed, blaming, resentful, accusing monsters. I brought them all home so that I can heal them by loving them.
Then I copied the letter onto a fresh sheet of paper, put it into an envelope and put it in the back of my therapy book. In my next session I read it to my therapist and experienced all sorts of wild, wonderful and unfamiliar feelings like ownership, agency and responsibility. I sent the letter on my way home from my therapy session.
Riding Deathtrap down the hill is just as much of an adventure as getting myself up the hill - the thrill and sense of achievement I experience coming down the hill on the way home from therapy is my reward for climbing Enlightenment Hill and going to therapy in the first place.
Climbing Enlightenment Hill is difficult, but the thrill of coming down again is an exhilarating reward. Learning to own myself is difficult, but the thrill of owning myself is an exhilarating reward.
Enlightenment is self-rewarding and more pleasurable than anything I’ve experienced previously and my pleasure of enlightenment motivates me to seek more enlightenment. In this way I am generating my own motivation for my healing-through-enlightenment journey.
I believe enlightenment is an example of Emergence Theory; something I am busy chewing on at the moment and will probably write more about in the future.
Self-Love is the Cure
Self-love is the cure. Others may find something that works better for them, but for me; self-love is the cure.
Now that my monsters are with me, I can practice loving them. I can control only me (on a good day) and I couldn’t control myself, and my behaviours, as long as I didn’t accept my monsters into myself. Now that my monsters are home, I can practice managing them and healing them. Some of them do need to be compassionately restrained in a private place within myself - there are some parts of being human that need that. I am learning.
I am learning to love all of myself, monsters included.
I am determined to be a whole person, a whole woman, with all of myself intact. I can’t undo the past, I can’t change what I’ve experienced, I can’t re-write the facts of my history. But I can take back all of the parts of myself that I’ve given away, and then practice loving all of myself.
For I will only learn to dance with the demons in your soul once I have learned to dance with the demons in mine.
