My Mom

Over the past year, learning about my love addiction and trying to figure out what about my childhood might have started it, I had thought a couple of things. Maybe it was the fact that my parents were divorced, my dad seeing me every other weekend and leaving me to live with my mother who was an alcoholic who tried to commit suicide a few times. In my eyes my father was the smartest, funniest man in the world. He still is. Yet as an adult I wonder why he didn't take us. A lot happened when I was a child and I always felt like it didn't affect me, that if anything it made me strong and mature. I watched my mom go in and out of rehab, and I wondered why she still treated me the same when she was sober.

It wasn't until this year and my brother saying it did I realize what the most damaging issue was. My mother is a narcissist. 

My father is not with me anymore. And my relationship with my mother consists of the occasional email. She continues to do her thing even though I barely give her the opportunity anymore. When she does have one, her usual technique is public shaming me to family. This relationship is not healthy, but I still feel guilty and try.

Today I understand that that relationship is the reason I spend the ones I have with men constantly trying to prove my worth. Her alcoholism is the reason I am codependent. I don't want to prove my worth anymore. I want to be loved without all the effort, and I know that some day I will be.

I know that having a poa is not a good thing. But I am honestly glad that I do. Because having that experience and the horrible despair that I sunk into allowed me to discover my addiction and learn things about myself that I had not realized my entire life. Today I am aware. Today I know that I am an adult and my decisions and the way I treat people is because of me alone.