What fools these mortals be.

If you have any doubts about what Co-dependency is, then you probably don't have it. If you continually find yourself in nightmare situations with people, people who you have no idea why you have anything to do with (present readers to this blog excluded), then you have some idea as to the severity of co-dependency. While it is helpful to identify perpetrators and "qualifiers", the most helpful thing of all is to recognize that it is YOU that is the problem, or rather "I". This is the first step in getting help.

Co-dependency is very tough to recognize because it is often hidden by behaviors that enable, enmesh and generally confuse one. But when you get some idea of the horrors of doing the same thing over and over again with people, whether in friendships or an intimate relationship, you realize just how insidious this dynamic is. Suddenly when you suggest to people your needs and they just laugh at you and continue to attempt to recycle the dynamic of your friendship, well you are in for a big surprise. Why isn't that person doing what I have requested they do? Why do they simply continue with their "agenda". Once again, it is most helpful to realize that it is YOU that is the one with the problem. And WHAT a problem it is. To actually face ones codependency can be one of the most difficult and horrifying tasks ever, because it requires a total examination of ones past and the original qualifier who began this entire cycle: the parent/s. To actually attempt to short circuit this cycle of addiction, and it is an addiction, means having to look at shit that you have buried for years and years. But as you get closer to the truth, the jig is up and you can no longer pretend that the same systems work anymore. There is enormous liberation in this, but not until you have gone through agonizing pain.

I attended my first Coda meeting tonight. It was extremely hopeful. Anyone locked in a terrible relationship with anyone can take to heart the fact that there is help out there. Google Codependents anonymous and there will be a list of meetings in your area. Don't let this deadly disease take you down. Have strength and be of good courage. There is help.

Acid flashback

Could it be true?

Multiple media outlets reporting that Manny Ramirez and the Dodgers have agreed in principle to a two year, $45 Million dollar deal, however neither the Dodgers nor Scott Boras' office have confirmed any deal being completed. Manny is either in LA or currently en route from Miami and will meet with owner Frank McCourt tomorrow at Dodger stadium, presumably to take a physical. There still may be some minor haggling over the way that the deferred money will be doled out. When that is completed, I will be breaking Matzoh all over my head and dancing on a bed of dreadlocks.

More later. Still cautious but feeling it.

Four months of my life I will never get back.

As the weekend sets into Monday, I am still up long past my bedtime trying to make sense of the most disgraceful sports negotiation I have ever witnessed. Four months ago the Los Angeles Dodgers made their first offer of two years and 45 Million dollars to Manny Ramirez and agent Scott Boras. It is now the first (soon to be the second) of March of 2009 and Manny is still not a Dodger. The most recent permutation coming earlier today as Boras offered a "new" offer that has the two sides roughly $3 stinkin Million dollars apart. But McCourt is starting to see blood and instead of just signing the deal, he is grabbing his crotch and acting all Nigguh on Boras. He is going in for the kill and, not unlike Kim Ng when she high fived the Dodger brass after defeating Gagne in arbitration several years ago, McCourt is acting like a little beeeyawtch. Great way to pave the red carpet for the greatest right handed hitter who ever lived, the man who single handed brought your team to the brink of a world series, great way to welcome him home. What an Irish prickly moron.

And its still not a sure thing. Manny doesn't have a prayer in hell to go anywhere else,that's clearly why Boras is playing this thing for all its worth. But the acrimonious, testy, nasty ass nature of these negotiations have set a new low for me. Manny will be a Dodger, unless he drops dead somehow which ain't gonna happen. The team will be a very formidable ballclub as O'Dawgs performance in Arizona showed today what his presence alone does for the defense. These negotiations have taken a toll on me personally however. Everyday looking at the paper and reading more and more of this nonsense has me totally spent. I believe, however, that these negotiations will end up being a class in some college somewhere. They are that ridiculous, or in the words of ESPN's senior baseball analysist Jason Stark, "insane".