A Codependent & A Roach Walk Into A Condo…
Will they have soup for dinner?
Photo by author, Emily B. Mingledorff
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
The condo seemed like a good idea. It had good ratings on VRBO; the price was better than a hotel room, and we’d save some money by cooking since we had an oven. What could go wrong?
The weather and…
Memorial Day weekend — the official, unofficial first weekend of summer. However, the weather didn’t get the memo. Therefore, we were in a 600 sq ft oceanfront condo with 60-degree temps, rain, and gale-force winds coming off the water. 🤬
The sea was brown; the sky was gray, and the beach was barely visible due to the rain.
But a rainy day at the beach is better than no day at the beach, so why complain?
Besides, we had a bigger problem.
The condo was already occupied — by roaches.
Roaches are nasty, creepy, repulsive bugs that crawl into and out of every nook and cranny they can find. They love kitchens and bathrooms because they feed on our food and feces.
Needless to say, they can carry diseases. Mississippi State published an article about potential problems they can cause.
Warning: it will give you the heeby-jeebies.🤮
Roaches often show up in random places. Even places that are sparkling clean.
Like the dishwasher.
I opened the condo dishwasher and admired its sparkling interior. Then a roach scurried across the top basket and disappeared. 🤯
I promptly shut the door and fumbled with the buttons as I screamed expletives. I found the most powerful setting on the machine and pushed it.
“Sanitary cycle.” Done.
Ok. It’s one roach, right? 🤷♀️
“I’ll allow it if it’s just one.” I thought.
We are in SC, after all. I can’t blame the bugs. Roaches are like the rest of us, they like the South.
However, an hour later, I stepped on a roach in front of the dishwasher. 😵
Clean roach, you say? No. Such. Thing.
Plus, it was larger than the one I sanitized in the dishwasher.
I was done.
My husband knew the second roach was two too many.
He tried to calm me, but it was too late. I was grossed-out by the🪳, AND I had the agony of confronting the host about the condition of the condo. It was a bad night.
I knew what I had to do. But could I do it?
What was I waiting for?
Here’s what was going on in my head:
Is asking for a refund fair? What about her? Will she believe me? Is she going to call me Karen? What if she tells her friends I’m a Karen?
Or the worst scenario: what if she gets mad and yells at me? 😱 I HATE people yelling at me. I feel like a little girl with no safe place to run.
This is me.
Hi. I’m Emily Mingledorff, and I’m codependent. I don’t want to ruffle feathers, and if/when I do, I obsess over it for months, even years.
I don’t like confrontation. I’d rather pee in my pants than ask my second-grade teacher to go to the bathroom. (True story!)
But would I rather stay in a condo with roaches than ask for a refund? 🤔 No.
I contacted the host and told her she had roaches. She responded with a song and dance about how she couldn’t have roaches…because the HOA sprayed consistently. 😵
Kinda made me feel like she was calling me a liar, which is exactly what I was afraid of, but…
She changed her tune when she received a portrait of the🪳 and said she would call the HOA to spray again.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had taken the first step, and I survived. We went to lunch while they sprayed.
I was feeling good about overcoming my codependence enough to talk to the host about the bugs I saw. When we returned from dinner, I saw evidence the HOA had sprayed.
I figured it was safe to do the dishes. Surely, the chemicals killed any bugs scurrying about.
Roaches are prehistoric.
I should’ve known better. Those critters survived 320 billion years on Earth. How did I think the HOA could get rid of the ones in the condo in one hour?
I opened the sparkling and now sanitized dishwasher, and lo and behold, there was another 🪳. As I put my phone into camera mode, a friend joined him.
There they were, strutting their beastly bug-butts inside the dishwasher. I stood with my head in the dishwasher, intermittently screaming and yelling at them to “be still” so I could take the picture.
“That’s it. We’re leaving.” I told my husband, showing him the pictures.
“It’s midnight,” he responded.
“Ok then, we are leaving tomorrow. I’m going to sleep in the car.”
I didn’t. But I wanted to.
Back to the codependent.
It was midnight, and I agonized about what to say as I sat down to email the host again. I didn’t want to sound rude. I definitely didn't want her to think we were trying to get a refund because of the weather.
But I also didn’t want to pay to stay in a roach-infested condo with a good view.
I finally decided on the right wording. I was straightforward when I wasn’t apologizing. (You gotta start somewhere, right?)
Basically, I wrote that I found two more roaches and needed to leave earlier than planned. We paid for four nights, but we only stayed for two, so I requested a refund for the two nights we wouldn’t remain, plus the charges for “host fees.”
Exhale. I did it.
But I couldn’t sleep.
Sure. Perhaps there was paranoia about roaches crawling into my ears while I was sleeping. (Read the Mississippi State article!) But it was more than that.
I felt bad about demanding a refund.
What was wrong with me? The lady’s condo wasn’t as clean as she advertised, and she had roaches. Leaving was a no-brainer. Why feel bad?
Codependency. The struggle is real.
My husband was deployed to Iraq 19 years ago. During that time, our marriage fell apart. I consulted a divorce attorney while trying to keep it together for our two little boys.
I saw a therapist regularly. His wisdom and God’s guidance were a few things that kept me sane as Alan and I worked on our own “stuff” while we were apart for the twelve-month deployment.
During that time, my counselor determined I was codependent. I told him I’d heard the word before but didn’t understand what it meant.
He explained it like this:
“You attempt to control what others think and do by sacrificing what you know is right.”
“Excuse me,” was my response. And I was every bit as sassy as the words reflect.
“You try to control your husband, and others, by acquiescing when you know you shouldn’t. You comply so they don’t get mad at you, leave you, or hurt you. Then you blame them for you feeling miserable.”
My face burned with rage. “I can’t believe you think that.”
He smiled because I walked right into his trap.
“Why do you care so much about what I think?” He asked.
“Touche.”
The therapist wanted me to watch for patterns of behavior that might fit his description of codependency. He wrote his definition and told me to put it in my purse so I could pull it out for reference.
“Codependence is when you sacrifice your integrity for temporary security.”
Long story short — he was right.
Though I carried it with me for years, I no longer keep it in my purse. It hangs on my refrigerator.
It’s there to remind me how easy it is to sell my integrity…for a bowl of soup.
Will I choose soup or integrity?
Esau had been working all day in the sun. He was exhausted and famished. His stomach growled; he felt weak; he was h-angry. Honestly, he would trade anything for a leg of lamb.
As he walked slowly toward home, Esau caught a faint whiff of a familiar scent. It was his brother’s famous soup! His parched mouth watered as he sped up and jogged toward the tent.
Esau’s brother, Jacob, finished his soup and loudly slurped the remaining broth from his bowl. He exhaled and released a long belch as Esau entered.
“Bruh! I’m starving! Gimme some of that soup. It’s not lamb, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Pour me a bowl,” Esau said, pulling up a chair.
Jacob knew Esau was hungry. He had been working in the heat all day.
However, Esau had only missed a couple of meals. He wasn’t literally starving… This was drama. Esau was always drama.
Jacob had an idea.
“What will you give me for a bowl of soup?” Jacob asked.
“What? Cut the camel crap. Get me some soup.”
“I’ll pour you some soup…in exchange for…your birthright.”
Esau rolled his eyes. “Sure. Whatever. What good is a birthright if I die of starvation? Right now, I want to eat.”
Esau giving away his birthright in Genesis 25 might seem insignificant to us.
But in his culture, a birthright was the most important thing he could have. It gave him a double portion of his father’s inheritance, plus made him the leader, lawyer, and judge of his family. It was a powerful position.
Esau’s flippant actions shed light on his flippant attitude: his desire to fill his stomach was the most important thing to him. Screw everything else.
Esau gave away his most precious gift for a bowl of soup.🍲
How often do we do the same?
How many times do we sacrifice our greatest prize — our integrity — for soup? Temporary safety, peace, security, stability…all soup if it costs us our moral principles.
Jacob and Esau weren’t codependent.
Jacob and Esau did not have a codependent relationship with each other (that I can see, anyway).
But the lesson for me isn’t about codependency in their relationship; it’s about settling for comfort when we could have the blessing of God’s favor.
That’s the codependent’s MO: “Give me comfort now, no matter the cost; I’ll deal with the fallout later.”
But when you sell your integrity for soup, you’re almost certain to miss the blessings that follow. That’s another post.
Meanwhile, back at the condo…
I could avoid conflict and stay there (eat soup). Or I could step out of my comfort zone and assert myself (keep my integrity).
I insisted she reimburse us for the two days we were not spending the night. The host responded to my email and hesitantly agreed.
I admit I felt slighted. I deserved more of a refund than that. Consistently finding roaches in a dishwasher was traumatizing.
Nevertheless, we got enough of a refund to pay for another place to stay.
I am proud of myself for pushing to get a refund at all!
The host wanted to give me a $25 gift card, apologize for the disposal, send me to Walmart for a new toaster, and call it a day.
And I almost agreed to it! 🫢
A codependent and a roach walk into a condo…
The roach says, “You paid a lot of money to hang with me and my gang,” and laughs as he pours a cold one.
The codependent wrings her hands and says, “I’m stuck with these tall, dark, and uglies because I don’t want to make the owner of this joint mad. Maybe we can co-exist.”
As the day goes by, the roaches throw a party on the clean dishes in the dishwasher. “Yo, thanks for cleaning these dishes, but now we’re having to crawl all over the place to find food. Do us a favor and quit running the dishwasher,” they shout.
The codependent feels ashamed.
“I can’t believe I’m allowing my family to stay here with roaches crawling all over the clean dishes. That’s seriously disgusting, and I’m only doing it to avoid conflict with a woman I don’t even know. This is crazy. Where is my love for my family? Where is my self-respect?”
She opens the dishwasher and yells, “Yo, roaches! I’m not selling my birthright for soup! Deuces, I’m out!”
The roaches roll their eyes and laugh. “Whatever that means! Ok, lady! See you at lunch!”
The codependent pushes her sleeves up and puts her big girl panties on. She calls the owner of the roach motel and politely asks to be refunded for her stay since the roaches obviously own that condo.
A few hours later, the owner of Roach Central refunds the codependent enough to move.
Nothing is more satisfying.
The codependent smiles to herself as she sits in the plush Embassy Suites, eating seafood and key lime pie with her family.
It’s just the three of them; no dishwasher, no roaches, and key lime pie…instead of soup.
The codependent reflects on the valuable lesson she learned. Though conflict and rejection are terrifying, integrity is quite satisfying.
