Dependency

All my life I was afraid of dependency. I wanted to avoid it at any cost. Most probably I felt that way because I had seen my mother collapse when my father left her who she depended on emotionally, economically, existentially. I wanted to be myself, determining my personality without the influence of anyone else. I knew you need to be able to ice skate alone so you can dance with someone else who can ice skate alone. I just didn't know how to do that. And I was even less able to spot the red flags and the signs that would tell me that I was about to be captured.

I always thought that my wish to travel was a dependency. I felt that if I go somewhere and I feel happy, confident, determined, then it must be an outer factor to make me that way, because when I'm "at home", I become again irritated, moody, depressed, indecisive and passive. I thought that's what I am as that's how I have always known myself.

Years passed and I have discovered more and more places, looking at more and more different mirrors. The interesting thing was that no matter where these mirrors were from, I continued to see the same woman: she is full of ideas and willpower, she is funny, she is a mediator, a facilitator, she is ready to learn new things and to share everything she knows, she is able to show the world who she is. Not someone living on low flame. Not ashamed of being herself. Not a violet under the bushes waiting to be discovered.

Although I understood that the places I have lived at were very different, the fact that I have always known who I was in the East and West, in the North and South, but never in the land I was born - that by the way never felt like my home - just never made sense to me. I have known it's like this but I could never explain why. I knew that when I was a child I copied my mother and then when I was married I unknowingly played the same part, but I knew it was only a part of the issue, it's about something more complex.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend about this. I told her that as I'm getting near the end of my marriage, I feel excited and interestingly whole. Like I am complete the way I am and I'm not in need of anyone to complete me. As I was talking to her the realisation came: I was not dependent on being in Italy and in the US and in London and in Yemen and in Sweden and in Walsall. I was, and I am being freed.

I was dependent whilst I was living in Hungary. I looked myself in that distorted mirror and I saw myself as small, quiet, begging - no, sorry, quietly waiting - for love and appreciation, I saw someone who didn't know what she wanted, that depended on the way others look at her. That was a dependent state of someone walking on eggshells, being constantly careful not to make too much waves. That behaviour I have learnt since childhood was a dependency and it continued in my marriage - not because I chose something familiar, because I had no idea what was going to happen.

I ended up in a dependency in order to recognise the pattern and then end it completely.

I know now who I am not. And who I am? The most interesting discoveries are there in front of me! What I know about her so far is really interesting.