Co-Dependent and Changing It

Four years ago I was a shy, reserved, and timid person who depended completely on my parents to make my decisions and take care of me. A lot of people would argue that I haven’t changed very much, but if you know me—really know me—then you know I’ve changed. Four years ago I was okay with being that person. Today I fight with myself on a daily basis to get past those feelings.

No one wants to be that co-dependent, and as I watched other college students interact with each other, with their families, and with the rest of the world, I realized just how strange it was that I couldn’t even order a pizza over the phone. I couldn’t walk into Wagoner Hall and ask for anything, so I ate whatever they had available in self-serve style. I still get the urge to do those things sometimes, but as of today I am fully capable of ordering a pizza and asking for a hamburger. I can walk up to a salesperson and tell them what I need. I can even—gasp—make a return. Without my mother, or anyone else for that matter.

I go home on a regular basis and sometimes my family doesn’t know what to say about the changes that have occurred in me over the last four years. I’ll take my sister’s sandwich—that was supposed to have no mustard on it—back to the counter and ask for a different one when she was just going to scrape it off. She usually just rolls her eyes, but sometimes she calls me on it. “I would have scraped it off…since when do you complain about stuff anyway?” Honestly, I didn’t know it was classified as complaining when I did it, because it might have stopped me. It sounds very negative.

I used to be the one that waited at the door while someone bought the movie tickets but now I do it myself. It’s strangely satisfying to be able to tell people what I want. It sounds so simple, like something everyone already knows how to do, but four years ago I was incapable of these things. I guess being dropped off two hours from home with no friends will do that to a person. You kind of have to learn to survive whether you want to or not. Not that I didn’t resist the entire time. Not that I still don’t resist. But that’s what’s changed in me. It’s not that I’m any more outgoing or any less shy—I just realize it now, and want to change it. So I do.

I think it’s a shock to my parents. They’re used to me being their co-dependent child. I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I want to live in Wilmington and not move home after graduation. That scares them, I think, because they don’t trust that I’m as self-sufficient as I need to be yet. And maybe I’m not. I still have problems going into the gym—a personal battle I’m losing, but finding ways around—and I still let people walk on me a little bit. But if I go home, I know I’ll turn back into who I was before—and so do they, which is why I think they’re okay with my decision. They want me to be happy and capable of my own life and they know I’m making progress—at tortoise speed, but give me a break. For eighteen years I was okay with hiding in a shell, so if it takes me a couple more to come out of it, I think I’m okay with that.