The Time I Went to a Codependents Anonymous Meeting

an amygdala
An Amygdala
Published in
3 min readMar 20, 2022

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I parked my car across the street from the hospital and jogged to the entrance, suspending my messenger bag with one hand to keep it from smacking against my leg. Chills ambled up my arms from the evening air and maybe other things.

I had spent yet another day at the bottom of a despair sinkhole.

In that cavernous space, I questioned why I chose to date horrible men. Why did I stay? Why did I allow them to even breathe the same air as me?

I was aware that something about my decision making process was seriously broken. I was acting against my own best interests. Consumed by self-sabotage.

Back then, I felt completely divided into two parts. One was a woman who knew her worth. She wanted a chance at healthy love.

The other half, however, had much more agency. I acted from this second place, choosing to put myself in traumatic environments so I could reenact the pain. I suppose I wanted to reclaim something that was lost, but the path I took only disoriented me.

Codependency guided my behavior, but it was a new concept for me. It seemed like a way of life for many South Asian women. I am convinced that the women in my community (and in many other communities) learn that love is the act of giving up critical pieces of yourself for the comfort of a man.

This deeply destructive notion is premised upon the assumptions that men are much more important than women, and that male acceptance is what makes a woman socially valuable.

Codependency was how I constructed most of my relationships. I had been taught that love meant avoiding my needs. Having wants was a frivolous thing. What was most important was to feel needed by someone else. I believed this lie, and as it settled in my mind, a painful emptiness grew.

I used relationships, usually bad ones, to try and fill that void.

I had just entered my late twenties when I finally decided to do something about my state of mind.

I walked down the hospital hallway and found the room where the support group was hosted. The group was named Codependents Anonymous, or CODA for short.

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an amygdala
An Amygdala

You Are Your Own, a curated collection of my feminist poems is available on Amazon & Free via Kindle Select: https://rb.gy/ncz77r