The answer to that is probably two-fold. I joined this community after it was suggested by a co-worker.

I am here because I am an extremely codependent person. For the past fifteen years, I have struggled with it, while I was a child, growing up with alcoholic parents; and then I continued the "tradition" by marrying an alcoholic.

My codependency mainly began to show during my early teenage years, after three people who were very close to me passed away. It was then that I turned to self-injurious behaviors and later to drugs.

During my senior year of high school, the self-injurious behaviors subsided, and I used drugs as more of a recreational/social pastime. This continued for about a year; and then I found myself in a relationship which, after just three months, lead to being engaged.

In September of 2007, I was married; and in April of 2008, my husband was diagnosed with NASH (Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis). By July of 2008, we had seen another doctor, my husband was officially diagnosed with End Stage Liver Failure.

He is my second reason for being here, because his alcohol addiction was one that he was never able to break... And therefore, he was unable to become even a candidate for the official candidate transplant list, because his team of doctors required him to be sober for one year.

It was throughout all of this that my co-dependency really began to show its true colors... As I was constantly trying to control the addiction so that he would be able to receive further information and acceptance for the transplant list. However, in January of 2009, my husband became very depressed, and from then on, decided to take his medications only if I would shove them in his face, and he admitted to drinking on a regular basis.

As we were both seeing different therapists, the idea of interventions and recovery centers came up a lot... But it wasn't until a week before my husband went into the hospital for the last time, that he fully admitted to his parents and I that he wanted to go to an in-patient recovery center.

A week later, he was in ICU, practically comatose; and while after another week he was doing better... He was too weak to walk or even hold silverware in his hands. And after two weeks of very little progress, and a reverse of progression -- according to his daily bloodwork, we took him home for hospice. He was home for three days, before he passed away. He was only twenty-nine years old.

For the past year, I have been struggling with my codependency; and while some of this could actually be attributed to the stages of grief a person goes through... It doesn't make a minute of it any easier to deal with.

So, I'm here, because I've been working for the past year and a half to gain myself back, with and without having a husband to come home to... And while I've got myself a fantastic support system full of friends, family, and yes... Even a boyfriend... There are still times that I don't want to tell them how I feel or what is going on, because I know that they cannot fully understand the aspects of codependency, because they've never had the unfortunate opportunity of having to deal with them.

"For My Brother," by Blue October.

"Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin."

--Tori Amos.