Page 78 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
I shook my head.
“It’s hard to define, but one definition is that it’s the person who enables the alcoholic.”
“Meaning it takes two to tango?”
“Exactly. Without your mom, your dad would not have been a problem for you and your brothers. She could have left and taken you with her. So she was invested in saving your dad for whatever reasons she could.”
“But she had to know. She saw the bruises.”
My therapist’s eyes filled with kind sympathy.
One thing that had happened as a result of not stuffing myself with food was that I felt my emotions. All of them, not just the good ones that were easy, but the bad ones that I’d been scared of. Hate. Frustration. Sadness. Annoyance. I wasn’t drugged out in a food stupor, so now they passed through my body, in varying stages of discomfort.
I didn’t like the uncomfortable feelings. I wanted them to go away. But I remembered that it was better to feel them than to shove them down with eating.
The main feeling I experienced these days was anger. I was so mad at my mother, all the time. I’d been forced to protect her my entire life, and now that I’d left, I had clarity to see. She should have done more. Not me.
I told this to the therapist, then I remembered, “She called just now. I think she wants to come visit. She hasn’t seen me in months.”
Her kind eyes asked the question before she formed the words with her mouth. “Do you want her to?”
I looked around the room before I nodded, my flash of anger dissipating. “I think so, but I’m scared. I have so many questions to ask her now, but to do so, I’ll have to confront her.”
“It’s your choice. Should you choose to confront her, it’s your privilege. Because you’d have the privilege of learning about her and understanding what happened.”
I kicked my feet at the floor. “What is the cure for codependency? How do you get better?”
“Detachment. You lovingly separate yourself from the person you are making dependent on you.”
At the end of the session, when it was time to go, I looked at my therapist. “Thank you for these sessions. I think I’m starting to know a few things. My body isn’t broken. It’s always worked perfectly. Even if the results weren’t a supermodel body.”
She smiled.
I continued, “There’s nothing wrong with the way I look. I don’t need to be ashamed of the way my thighs meet in the middle. I earned these thighs. I survived.”
“You did. You overate as an act of self-preservation and self-love. You deserve to look in the mirror and know that you love yourself enough to do anything to protect yourself.”
“And I deserve to know the truth.”
“Mija. You’re so skinny.”
A few days later, my mom settled into the couch in the living room sipping a glass of water and looking around. The rabbit hopped by. Elvis snoozed in his dog bed.
“Careful you don’t get too thin,” she clucked. “You’ll have to jump around in the shower to get wet, there’ll be nothing left of you.”
At a BMI of 36—still obese—she was worrying about me losing too much weight.
Old me would have nodded and bought a bag of cookies to gain back whatever weight I’d lost. New me had read up on codependency.
Not only was I codependent, she was, too. Passive-aggressive. Controlling.
And now we were going to talk about it.
After giving my mom the tour—Mikey was out running errands—she told me that she liked the house and she missed me. I sat down next to her on the sofa. My heart beat faster, but I had to do this. For me.
“Mom. I need to ask you something.” I braced myself. This was a confrontation, and I hated confrontation. But emboldened by my therapist, I knew it was my honor and my privilege to understand why she’d done the things she’d done.
“Anything, mija.”
