While watching HBO showing, two in particular - Mildred Pierce and the Sopranos, I began to realize that they were more than a light escape.
Set during the Great Depression, Mildred Pierce highlighted men's struggle to find work and women's picking up the slack to bring in enough to meet the families' needs. The main characters are Mildred Pierce, middle class suburban housewife., and her daughter who had an unwarranted belief that she was better than the common lot of their blue class family and had a sense of entitlement to anything her heart so desired.
After asking myself over and over how her daughter had acquired her habits, it finally occurred to me that this was a story about extreme co-dependence, which I am sure mushroomed during this period in history, given that some seemed to have enough money to drink a lot and there was always someone around to carry on in spite of this. Mildred Pierce had built herself an empire of restaurants, using her housekeeping skills and what turned out to be the bad advise of a financial specialist and friend.
The daughter, having been given absolutely everything she ever wanted, managed to strategize to acquire all of her mother's assets and more and walked away with it all lock, stock, and barrel.
This left Mildred with her husband, who she had divorced and now remarried, and the house where they began their married lives. They were ready to start from scratch. And so it ended. I wonder if Mildred learned her life lessons?
Then there was the full six seasons of the Sopranos. In case you are not familiar, it revolves around Tony Soprano, the eventual Don of the Mafia family in New Jersey. Throughout the seasons, Tony was in therapy with Dr. Melfi.
About half way into the first season, I was asking myself about Dr. Melfi's knowledge of sociopathy - and psychopathy for that matter - and why she didn't just drop this guy, with whom she was wasting her time attempting to guide into a rehabilitated state of being. At the end, in the final season, she finally gets the message.
This story line was about co-dependence, as well as the story line in Mildred Pierce. The difference lies in the the sociopathic behavior of Tony Soprano and the other men on his "team". I decided the intrinsic value of the Sopranos was its case study of qualities of culturally embedded sociopathy, its acceptable behavior in some circles, and a co-dependant society.
Tony's wife, not necessarily a co-dependant at heart, knew what she bought into and lived for its benefits. She was more or less one of the "team". I also found myself wondering about her ability to separate the happiness of having her family and the terror of the source of how she was being sustained.
Having the time on my hands during my convalescence to watch such stories, I, again, asked myself, the purpose of these becoming available for me at this time.
As a result, I have had the opportunity to reflect on my own life experience, especially my role in the communities to which I have belonged. I could see my co-dependence thriving, in spite of my conscious intentions to have it be otherwise, to be interdependent with a higher purpose in life.
As a result of my reflections, I can deeply feel myself no longer falling into that pit of self-destruction.
And instead, here I am, totally grateful for no longer having to earn a living and for no longer having to do what it takes to be acceptable to a community's or another person's standards.
When have you experienced yourself as co-dependant and having to make some new decisions about how you will relate to it?
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