Enabler

I am reading about this word because I am in conflict about my own inadvertent involvement in the aid of someone hell-bent on self destruction.  I have the desire to be an empowering enabler (one who encourages another to achieve their goals and become self-sufficient), but I have been manipulated into becoming a destructive enabler (one who actually speeds the demise of a person who is self destructing).  This is, undoubtedly, further complicated by the self destructive person who distorts the intentions of those who love them (the enablers) by seeing their efforts to boost them over the wall of chaos as evil attacks, thus dragging all concerned to the lower depths of existence.

I have furthered my studies to include co-dependence and am going quite mad trying to reach clarification.  I find solace in Melody Beatie's comment "It is everywhere and everyone.  Of course she has to burst my bubble by defining it simply, "A codependent person is one who has let another person's behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person's behavior."  This could relate to everyone everywhere if the key word weren't  "obsessed".

                                                           Homeless 

                    Your choices and my guilt
                    keep us in a crib of decadence.
                    My life time of moderation   
                    masked addiction insidious -
                    justified Contagion -
                    left us all in the desert
                    awaiting intervention.

                                                                              07-25-13