You Are the Answer

“We’re often not attached to the thing itself but to the idea of that thing.

We have a compulsive belief that we must acquire something outside

of ourselves to make us complete.”

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr, Living a Life of Awareness

No one wastes more time looking outside themselves for personal completion than a codependent does. Before recovery, I was vigilantly looking endlessly for the right person to complete me. I had a big empty hole inside my chest. It wasn’t visible, but I felt the unbearable emptiness of it every day. It never went away. And I had no clue how to fill it up and make myself complete—aside from finding someone else to fill the hole and complete me.

Time and again, I tried foolishly to fit various people inside my empty hole. But no one ever filled it up to my satisfaction. All of them were able to calm my codependent crazies for short periods of time, but no one ever brought me lasting peace and happiness.

When these various people were failing at filling up my ever-darkening emptiness, I turned to other outside objects to fill it. Chocolate donuts, pizza, shopping for new clothes, buying new CDs and drowning myself in Dr. Pepper were my primary alternative methods of filling-up my spiritual emptiness. Again, they all worked for short periods of time, but nothing I tried ever provided me with the permanent fix I desperately needed.

Because I was clueless as to what I really needed, all of these things—from people to Dr. Pepper—became major attachments. I attached to people and tried desperately to force us to fade into each other. When that didn’t work, all I had to do was think about going to Winchell’s Donuts and I’d get an instant high before I ever even placed a chocolate donut into my mouth. Likewise, I got my positive mood-change immediately as soon as I thought about going to the mall to buy a new shirt. In both cases, I mistakenly thought that these outside objects would complete me once I possessed them.

The real insanity here was the idea that one more donut or one more shirt or one more person was going to do it—finally once and for all. Every time I engaged in this behavior, I subconsciously thought “This is it! The magic one that’s finally going to take away all my pain forever!” Of course that never happened. There is no magic fix—at least not from outside of ourselves.

What I learned in recovery was that I had to look inside myself for the answer. And what I found was really missing from my life—and causing the empty hole in my soul—was ME! That’s right. Anytime we are feeling that big empty, gaping hole inside of us it’s because we are missing from our own lives. No one else and no other thing is missing—just us.

In recovery, we learn to start showing up for ourselves. We learn to befriend ourselves and to fill up our inner emptiness with self-love. It’s the only answer for filling up our big empty—permanently.

So if you are still looking outside of yourself and still wanting to attach to outside objects, get to a recovery meeting and learn to look inside yourself instead. You’ll be forever grateful.