Fires: Codependency
There is something seductive about another person's fire.
The glow of it.
The urgency.
The feeling that if you just stay a little longer,
carry a little more,
offer a little more of yourself,
something will finally change.
The flames reach upward.
And without realizing it,
you begin reaching too.
You stop gathering wood for your own hearth.
Stop tending your own garden.
Stop listening for the quiet things.
The things that do not shout.
The things that do not demand.
The things that do not burn.
Your dreams.
Your body.
Your creativity.
Your life.
Meanwhile your own fire begins to dim.
Not all at once.
Slowly.
So slowly you almost miss it.
A project left unfinished.
A walk not taken.
A poem not written.
A boundary not spoken.
Some have become so accustomed to the smoke that they no longer know they are standing in it.
And if you make their fire your home,
you will forget too.
I used to think love meant sitting shoulder to shoulder with someone in the ashes.
Proving my devotion through smoke inhalation.
Proving my care through exhaustion.
Proving my love through sacrifice.
But fire does not understand sacrifice.
It consumes whatever is offered.
Now I think love looks different.
Like standing at the edge of the flames with open hands.
Like saying,
I am here.
I see you.
I believe you can find your way.
But I will not burn with you.
Because there are fires meant for warmth.
Fires meant for gathering.
Fires meant for cooking meals,
telling stories,
making homes.
And every moment I spend feeding a fire that is not mine,
I neglect the one I was given to tend.
So I am learning to turn around.
To walk back through the smoke.
To return to my own hearth.
To kneel before the embers.
To breathe gently.
To rebuild what I abandoned.
To remember that my life is not waiting somewhere beyond everyone else's healing.
It is here.
Quietly glowing.
Asking for wood.
Asking for attention.
Asking to be chosen.
Perhaps that is the real lesson.
Not learning how to save people from their fires.
Learning how to stay with my own.
Learning that the warmth I have spent my life searching for in other people's flames
has been waiting as my own sovereignty to claim all along.
Sources
Brown, Brené. The Gifts of Imperfection (2010)
Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly (2012)
Karpman, Stephen B. "Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis" (1968) — introducing the Drama Triangle
Jung, C. G. The Undiscovered Self (1957)
Jung, C. G. Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)
Beattie, Melody. Codependent No More (1986)
Lerner, Harriet. The Dance of Anger (1985)
Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)
Porges, Stephen W. The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory (2017)
Maté, Gabor. When the Body Says No (2003)