As the adult child of a couple of booze hounds, I’m what you might call codependent.

My friend Alison articulated it well – I’ll paraphrase. Simply put it makes me like the Crocodile Hunter of humans. I feel the need to collect injured or weak animals, nurse them to health and re-release them to the wild.

It also means I have a hard time saying no and it’s easy for people to take advantage of me. I’m generous by nature and overly generous by defect.

So, in my old age and with the encouragement of friends, I’m learning to say the new magic word. It’s not always what I want to say and when I do it there are feelings of guilt, but I’ve also learned that there are people out there who prey on my weakness. People that I give to without thinking or question who come back time and again and ask for more. Acceptable? Nah, I don’t think so.

These are the people you will never be able to call at night. Ones who will fail to consider returning any generosity you showed without question or expectation of return. These are the ones that will leave you empty handed and empty hearted and manage to make you feel as though you have done something wrong.

Having born witness to physical abuse I wonder sometimes if this isn’t worse. Would I rather have a black eye or a bruised soul?

Which leaves me here. Extracting these individuals from my life like thorns from my palm after squeezing the stem of ridiculously expensive shrub/weed/flower. I consider how I might have enjoyed it’s beauty and life force had it not been for the unavoidable and brutally painful wretched little daggers.

It’s funny. I might feel sorry for myself if I wasn’t so busy feeling sorry for them.