Recovering From: Customer Service + Social Media
Part 3
Being a server for decades is not great for someone who is codependent. And yet, sacrificing my own needs and dignity so someone could have a pleasurable dining experience made total sense to me. Having the main idea of my job be pleasing other people was as natural as breathing.
Back in the 1990’s it was totally normal for waitstaff to be belittled and put down- by customers, by owners, by managers, by the kitchen. We were the lowest of the low. It was exactly where I felt like I belonged.
I didn’t know then what codependecy was. I just knew that I was willing to put myself last. It felt hard and also fine that I went to work every day on eggshells wondering if this was the day I might get fired, every day was different and unpredictable. I got used to it, I was a well trained people pleaser and even though there were times when I tried to stand up for myself mostly I just learned to STFU and be grateful I had a job.
My codependency thrived in this environment. It bloomed and blossomed and put down solid roots. Me being in active alcohol addiction was the accelerant it needed to really flourish. Together they were unstoppable, and working in customer service as a waitress was fertile ground that returned a successful crop year after year.
I will never forget when I recognized how codependent I was in a therapy session several years ago.
Shortly after I started therapy, I’d begun to notice the I cared way too much how strangers in traffic felt about me. I would miss my turn to not upset the person behind me. I was hyper aware of being in the left lane if I wasn’t passing. I would drive faster than felt safe so the person behind me wouldn’t get annoyed. Defenselessly was the way I drove, and once I fully recognized what I was doing I felt very uncomfortable. And ridiculous.
How is it possible to get to your mid forties and be like this?
Why did I care so much about strangers in their cars around me- people I wouldn’t meet or talk to but that I wanted desperately to please. The most thoughtful woman on the road: me!
It was an illustration of what the rest of my life was like, these unspoken rules of codependency, or: how I regulate myself depends entirely on things other than me. It’s a system I’d been building for decades.
Don’t have needs or be needy. Don’t be too much. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t make trouble. Be runoverable. Be a flap not a wall. Make it easy on others. Don’t have differing opinions or solid beliefs. Be maleable, expendable. If you can’t speak up that is an unspoken yes. Look outside yourself for instructions. I don’t know what I’m doing.
(This is my life’s work phrase: I don’t know what I’m doing. We all have it- the thing, the theme, the mantra that quietly rules over our lives. It was my subconscious instruction, the thing that influenced my thought processes and decisions.)
I don’t know what I’m doing is the thing that made customer service, specifically waiting tables, bad for me. It’s what makes social media bad for me too. It means I have jello where there needs to be backbone, erasers where boundaries should be.
Codependency created a narrative that kept me in hypervigilant eggshells mode so much of the time- and customer service and social media paired perfectly. What drove me to learn how to cover over my strong temper, my intensity, the uniqueness that I have always adored about myself? How did a strident, independent, outspoken child and teenager end up building a life that was reliant on shutting up and doing as I was told?