One of the biggest battles I’ve faced in life is beating to my own drum and allowing myself to live in way that often doesn’t coexist with the rest of the world around me. For most of my life I did whatever I could to coexist with the rest of the world, regularly changing parts of myself to fit in and blend in, to be accepted, and hopefully in turn be loved in the process. But, living that way for as long as I did, I never quite understood was living in codependency.
Many have assumed I’m still codependent with much of the writing I’ve been doing lately and the sharing I have on social media. It’s quite the contrary though. As being codependent at its very core means pleasing others at my own expense and if I was going to do that, I’d take every single suggestion being given to me and stop posting things in the way I do. But I’m not going to do that. Because I am a unique and divine expression of God, as each of us are, and every time I conform to what someone else thinks I should or shouldn’t be doing, I’m moving away from that expression and moving instead into codependent thinking, a codependent existence, and ultimately a codependent addiction.
I never found any happiness living codependently. That’s why I ceased living that way years ago because I had to learn how to be ok with hanging out with myself alone when the partner I had stopped wanting to do a lot of things I wanted to do and what few friends I had didn’t want to do them with me either. It’s ironic because how my life is now is how my life was as a young kid.
Back then, I lived uniquely different than others. What I liked and how I looked and the way I acted was so different, it led to people making fun of me and bullying me incessantly. Instead of remaining true to myself though, I eventually adapted, became codependent, and found temporary acceptance at my own expense. I hurt that little boy within me every, single, day, by conforming to what everyone thought I should be doing, saying, living, etc.
But I’m not going to do that anymore. And I’m ok with that. I’m not going to be silenced either. Because I choose to speak my truth with unconditional love for myself, something I never allowed myself to do from my teenage years on. It’s why I know I’m not codependent anymore because I’m now living to my own truth.
Codependency was my first serious addiction and hopefully my last and now the only thing I truly am becoming dependent upon is waiting upon God for guidance, which is coming, slowly, but it’s coming. And I know it’s leading me to a far brighter day, one that will glow in my unshakeable faith, and one that will far surpass anything I’ve ever experienced in all the years I kept listening codependently to what everyone else told me to do, instead of listening to God and remaining true to me…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
