All Entries Tagged With: "frustration"

Hide and Seek

I was hiding under the desk, in the space where you tuck the chair away.  I could hear them counting.  “100… 99….98…. 2… 1…. Ready or not, here I come!”  Pleased with my hiding spot I stayed tucked away.  I heard cries of “Found You!”, but still my hiding spot was secure.  The sounds of children running and their laughter died away and there was silence.  “They must be listening for me,” I thought.  I waited and waited.  Where was everyone?  It seemed like hours had passed.  I finally emerged from my hiding spot and no one was in sight.  My mom was in the kitchen.  I quietly asked her if the kids were still looking for me, not wanting to be seen.  Looking confused she replied, “Everyone is in the back yard playing.”  I walked away wondering, “Was my hiding spot so good they couldn’t find me?”  I tried to reassure myself this was the case, but deep down I knew they had just forgotten about me and couldn’t be bothered to look.  I felt hurt.  I tucked that pain away and joined everyone in the back yard pretending like nothing had happened.

I don’t know why this memory emerged today.  In learning about codependence and thinking about the role it has played in my life, I realize it has been my constant companion even before depression entered the picture.  I remember feeling so confused that no one had come to look for me while playing Hide and Seek.  Because I was codependent, even as a small child, I was very aware of everyone and always knew what was going on, and naturally assumed everyone else was the same way.  I think this was the first time I realized that I was different.  But I didn’t look at myself in a bad way- I thought everyone else was horrible because they didn’t care as much as I did.  They didn’t notice the things that I noticed.  This feeling has carried through into my adulthood.

There have been several times in my young marriage that I thought Tareak was just a horrible insensitive guy.  I couldn’t grasp how he didn’t notice or take care of my needs.  I would think, “Am I seriously going to have to spell this out for him?  How can he not see what I need?  It is so obvious.”  And if I did have to spell it out for him, then anything he did “didn’t count”- because I had  to tell him to do it.  I wanted him to notice my needs like I noticed his.  I wanted him to be so attentive that he was always one step ahead of me, anticipating my every need.

In learning about codependence I have realized that I am the unhealthy one in this relationship.  It isn’t normal to focus so much on someone else that you forget who you are and what you like.  Even though I know that he is the healthy one, I still have feelings of frustration and resentment that he isn’t as attentive as I am.  Knowing that it is my codependence that makes me this way helps me keep my feeling and emotions in check, but it doesn’t change them.  There is still a big part of me that is that little girl hiding under the desk, just waiting for someone to care enough to come and find me and make sure I am okay.