I sit in my office looking at the poster that I see every day, which says in big red and white letters: “Our company wants you to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)”.
 

The more I looked at this phrase the more I thought about my breakdown today that made me have to call my sister. The anxiety just started to build in me. I don’t know where it came from and it set in fast. I started to drown. The only thing I could think of is that I didn’t want it to go down like I know it could. I am at work for crying out loud. So, I took my lifeline and called. She is always there for me. She is a great listener. She doesn’t try to fix me because she knows she can’t. She just lets me talk and helps me think through what I am saying.

The more and more I talked everything just started flooding out. Everything she tried to tell me that was positive, I would just turn it around and make it negative. That is my one big evil super power. I can make ANYTHING negative. Especially about myself. I have been perfecting my self-loathing in my own head for so long, I don’t even know where it all started. I say right now it started when my mother gave me up. But I know I was kind of codependent before that, but I can’t pinpoint anything. I just know that I am codependent.
 

So, I say all my negative things about myself to my sister, and that is it. I had to go back to work. Angel told me that she loved me and now might not look like it will get better, but it will, and we hung up. After we hung up, I still felt everything that I had been feeling before the call, but I just really felt myself existing. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I just felt my existence nothing more nothing less. I was existing in all the bad feelings I had. Then something happened: I went about my day at work.
 

The bad thoughts, the scared feelings, the anxiety was all still there but I just lived with it and went about my normal duties. That brings me back to PPE. If you are not in construction, you might not know that it stands for Personal Protective Equipment. As I go through everything that I am trying to learn from going to CoDA, I feel like CoDA is trying to teach me my own PPE that I can use to help protect myself from myself.

I follow the steps and say the affirmations and talk to people about my problems. Instead of just strengthening my evil super power of self-loathing inside my mind, I find outlets to let it out and it works. Talking at the meetings, talking with my sister, damn even talking out loud to myself. No one has to be alone or feel alone unless they want to feel that way. Talking out loud about everything that is going on in my life right now helps me to release it from my mind instead of having the self-loathing feed off it inside my head. That is one of my PPE. I ask and thank my higher power for any other PPE that can help me go through my recovery from codependency. I will exist and continue to move forward.

Rey E