Rocketman: You’ll Never Be Loved, So You Learn How to Cope

Elton John & Paul Young

"I'm Your Puppet"

Yesterday I was talking with someone who suffered from the same severe codependent tendencies that I used to suffer from, too. She said she used to have a dire need to melt or fade into the other person. I related totally. After I chose a toxic person to take as my codependent hostage, I simply wanted to blend into being them.

I’d take on all of their likes/dislikes, beliefs and even many of their personality characteristics. I’d pick up on their mannerisms, key phrases or words they liked to use, things they liked to do, places they liked to go, etc., and I’d assume their identity (at least internally). Basically, I totally lost my self by trying hard to become their mini-me.

Of course, when I say I “lost myself,” I didn’t really have a self I could identify. I’d spent so much of my life being whomever my mother, or father, or most anyone else wanted me to be, that I really didn’t know who I was anymore. I just knew that the real me wasn’t good enough to be loved, and I was desperate to be someone who was lovable. So, I became everyone’s puppet.

I saw the movie Rocketman the other day, and I easily identified with all of Elton John’s emotional pain over never having been loved by his parents for who he was. There’s a scene where he’s looking in a mirror before going on stage, and he thinks to himself “You’ll never be loved, so you have to learn how to cope.” It’s the very thinking of every child who ever felt unloved by their parents. It’s also the thinking that leads us to become addicts as we grow into being adults.

Yes. If you feel like you’ll never be loved for who you are, you learn how to cope, either through an addictive object, event or by the codependent need to lose yourself in another person that you think is lovable. Elton John learned to cope through alcohol and drugs, primarily. But after he became famous he also attempted to cope with his parents by providing them with gifts and trying to buy their love and acceptance. It didn’t work, and it never does. His parents were too broken to ever love him properly, at least according to the script for Rocketman.

My parents were too broken to love me, too. They never knew or understood that fact. I also tried just as hard to earn or buy their love, but always failed. Eventually, when those forms of manipulation failed time and again, I coped by becoming a puppet.

Those were very bad days. I’m thankful that I now know who I am, through Recovery and my Higher Power, and I no longer have the need to please people into loving me, or to fade into them by becoming their mini-me, or puppet.