Hi. My name is Sara. And I'm codependent.

I remember hearing the word "codependent" when I was 17. It was while I was in therapy. How much therapy does a 17 year old need? Well, I don't know about other 17 year olds, but I needed a lot!!
I already felt like my life was a hopeless abyss of things that were totally out of control. Or, more appropriately, out of MY control.
Up to that point in my life I had experienced my own significant losses and disappointments to the point that I was extrememly depressed. Being depressed has never been my nature. Or, it wasn't until I started to feel helpless in my own life.
This is when my journey into codependence started. Looking back, I can see so clearly how it happened. How it felt. What I believed about myself...
I grew up in a good home. I was happy for the most part and spoiled beyond all reason (I was the youngest of 8).  Unfortunately, my parent's had already planted and cultivated certain seeds of codependence when they lost their first son when he was only 4, to cancer.  Then, when they had children who made serious life choices that they themselves didn't agree with and felt sorrow over. Then, again, when they lost a daughter-in-law with cancer, a grandson with a heart defect, both sets of their parents, and again, the loss of another son, to a brain tumor.
All of this took place before I was 17.
It is very easy for me to see how so much loss and sorrow could elicit such a need for control. Any control.
Being a codependent myself, I know the questions they must have asked themselves:
"What did I do wrong?"
"How did this happen?"
"What do I do to keep this from happening again?"
"How can I make this stop?"
I would wager that even those who are not codependent, when experiencing the same losses, or worse, would ask the same questions. But the questions are only the beginning...
I didn't ask these same questions until about 6 years ago. In my own marriage, with my own struggles.
I was raised watching my parents try to answer these questions. I was educated in the art of codependency without myself, or my parents, even realizing it.
There is something natural that comes with being a parent, though. Something that makes us want to protect our kids from everything. We don't want them to experience the same pain we did. Or make the same dumb mistakes. But, when we're codependent, we actually take action to prevent those things. 
I never saw myself as codependent (because I despised the codependency I felt at times in my youth). I didn't want to see my own codependece. 
I actually didn't realize how truly codependent I am, until 2 months ago.
I had grown up with it. Heard about it. Seen it. Felt it. And I still didn't see my own problem until I was 31, and forced to open my eyes to what was happening in my life, and how I had contributed with my obsessiveness, my need for control and my constant caretaking and judging.
Two months ago, I thought the problems I had in my life were all caused by everyone else around me. They had made bad choices! They had lied! The more I fought for control and peace, the more chaos I found myself in! It was like the chaos started swallowing up my entire family, my faith, and my own will to survive.
That was when I attended my first 12 step meeting.
In that meeting I heard a familiar word. Yep, you guessed it: CODEPENDENT
I thought, "oh, yeah, I know what that is....don't I?"
As I listened to others who claimed codependency as their "addiction," it felt like they were describing my inner most thoughts and feelings. I couldn't believe it! They were me! I was them!
I couldn't ignore the truth any longer. I felt it had been slapped across my face.
I AM CODEPENDENT!
I have spent weeks trying to figure out why. How? What I'm realizing now, is that 'why', and 'how', don't matter as much as 'what.' What am I going to do now, to change it?
That is the very question I hope can be answered on this journey. I am ready to change!
I also know I'm not alone.
I know there are so many others who have felt, or who do feel, lost. Who have been betrayed. Who have been drenched in sorrow and existed day to day in the depths of despair, constant worry and anxiety.
I hope somehow, or in some way, that you can take this journey with me. That we can together overcome the emotional and mental handicap that is codependence.
It is my goal to write a new thought, new lesson learned or new perspective on here daily. I welcome and appreciate your thoughts and perspectives as well.
Here's to the beginning of the end, of my codependence!