The Center of the Onion
“I think I have the right to feel confident about my choice (in a husband)” was what I finally articulated after going round and round with my therapist concerning my desire to possibly leave my marriage. At that, she looked at me and said, “Now that statement feels true. I can’t find anything contestable in that. Your script was how you married B.”
I replied, “There are fleeting times when I look at him and think he is a good choice—I observe his strong shoulders or he does something I appreciate, but then this little voice enters in and says, “No, no, no.”
She replied, “Of course. How can something you got with a bad script ever be positive for you?”
I cried for what seemed like minutes from ramming this iceberg of pain: the confusion and sorrow I have felt for much of my marriage, unable to commit to loving or leaving, part of a script that is not organic to my marriage alone, but to my thirty-two years of life history before it.
It hurts so much, this grief I have over my “script”—the theft of my right to confidence in my decisions, stolen by my mother’s codependent way of loving. After a lifetime of having major decisions co-opted by my mother’s influence, thirteen years of marriage that I questioned from the beginning, seven years of intermittent therapy, I am in the depth of the onion, exploring the most sacred of pain: the rape my free will by my mother and, what feels even worse than that ,because I am so critical of myself, my complicity in it.
I want to wring out the final dredges of every painful moment that I experienced due to that theft. I am no longer a victim and the perpetrator is now dead, no longer around to mistakenly place her fear/pain/issues/agenda/worries and the shadow side of her love on my life. All that remains of her is the purest heaven sent wish that I can live a healthier, happier life.
The catch-22 is that I couldn’t have made a “confident” choice (about Brett, about my career, about many things) because I didn’t have that skill set—sabotaged by the disease of codependency. I came into the world with exuberance, sensitivity, and a true wild streak, but wasn’t given free rein to make mistakes and learn on my own. My nature was a scary concept for my “good girl” mother, herself a daughter of a codependent mother, and I know her love wanted to protect me from the world and myself. Also true was that I had (and still have) a strong intuitive sense, but I didn’t have the grounding to bring my wishes to reality as it wasn’t affirmed that my wishes were valid or that I had a right to them. So torn was I between my nature and my nurture.
Seven years ago, with two children under three and in a very dark spot, it was, ironically, my mother who told me to get to a therapist when she called from a vacation to check in on me. “I will call back in fifteen minutes to see if you have made the appointment.” I did and it launched the past seven years of personal growth and self-work. I am with my fourth and, as I like to tease her, “my final” therapist because I want to change the script, and live my life in confidence—in love with my decisions, my wishes, my beliefs, and myself. I want to get to know and act in those, not needing anyone else to determine what they look like. I want to be in a healthy relationships of my choosing, ones in which I will leave codependent influences behind.
Throughout my marriage, I have viewed B through the “script.” (Is there no wonder why I love that band?) The rarely absent undercurrent that my decision to marry him was based on the codependent patterns of my youth was very similar to my inability to really ever love my career as an ESL teacher. Strongly impacted by my mother’s manipulation, my job choice never felt “authentic,” or one I that I owned completely, and my marriage reflects that same inauthentic thread.
