I am suffering with a very heightened form of codependency right now.

Right now, I'm a senior in college, with exams and then one semester left before graduating. I'm engaged to be married to a wonderful man, who is teaching English as a Christian mission and I am so fearful to mess it up. My mother, as a consequence of years as an alcoholic, is suffering from liver cirrhosis and failure. I took many steps to separate myself from the necessity to worry about her all the time and focus on my own life, but this habitual worry and fear has transferred to other aspects of my life, and I can't seem to pull myself out of it.

I grew up between two broken homes: in one, my mother stayed drunk, frequenting bottles of hard liquor on a constant basis. She was in and out of rehabs, had more car accidents than I can remember, always bringing home random strangers I didn't trust. My father is a functioning alcoholic, and we would spend every other week with him. However, he was verbally abusive and frequently compared me to my mother and made me feel stupid. He would call me "idiot" "dumba*s" "dumbf**k", always criticizing.

It took until I was no longer a teenager find it within me to join a church, which allowed me to think of myself as a daughter of God, with a purpose, which helped me find the strength to pursue a different kind of life. Unfortunately, I'm not good at figuring out what it means to rely on God.

I did find the strength a couple of years ago to just get out in the world, meet people, have fun, make friends, work two jobs, and become an A level student. During this time, I met the love of my life, and codependency was not a part of my life.

However, as we got more and more involved over the year, as my mother's health declined (I still lived with her at this point for financial/school reasons) and she put pressure on me to pick up the pieces of her life. She would guilt me about my ambitions learn Chinese and go abroad, guilt me about my plans to move away. She is afraid that nobody will be here when her liver shuts down. The problem is, it doesn't matter how bad her liver gets, she will always go back to drinking.

I began to put pressure on my love, to let me stay over at his apartment with him, and against his best Christian judgment, he began to let me on a frequent basis, and for different times in the year, I would basically live with him. I depended on him for escape and release. His love and affection became a huge motivator in my life. I felt beautiful, loved, and he would always encourage me and believe in me in ways I had never been believed in or supported. I was doing wonderfully. But our relationship became my first priority, and I became sensitive when anything seemed a little off.

I went abroad to China this summer for a month and felt like a new person. I didn't think about the people back home and communication between me and my love were frustrating. I felt healthy and alive. I knew that he was also going to be going to China a month after I got back for a year. Now that he's been in China for five months, we've been on a very rocky, unstable spiral. I have become jealous, suspicious, lonely, paranoid, and have began to accuse him of things that aren't there, but once my adrenaline begins, I can't seem to stop myself from hurting him. And making him afraid to talk to me, because I'll be depressed, crying, or accusing him of things he's not doing. I want so badly to stop doing this to him, but I seem to be unable to control it.

I cry frequently, and get absolutely paralyzed in cyclical thought processes. I live in an apartment by myself filled with mine and my fiance's things. I feel like I'm in survival mode, that I've lost my sense of personhood. My sister, who used to share the burden of family drama with me, moved early this year to Colorado. She has come back once to visit and she has been going to Al-Anon groups and such and she seems so much more mentally stable and healthy.

I have the worst self-esteem. My family and friends say I'm beautiful, and I will make a face and say, "Thanks" very bashfully, or reject the compliment entirely. I have all my mirrors in my house covered up, because I can't stand to look at my face. And when I actually begin to feel pretty, I will sit in the mirror and pick at my face, when I don't even have acne, and make myself ugly.

I have read so many things, and all these emotions are said to be caused by thoughts. But I seem so unable to control my thoughts. I write in journals, but I never live out the advice I end up giving myself daily. I haven't got a support group, because my close friends have all moved off, and it's so difficult to make friends in college when you're as broke as I am. My mind consists only of two thoughts, which usually translate into worry: graduation/fear of failure, and my fiance/fear of losing him. I have completely blocked my parents out of my life, because when I let them in, worry about them creeps in.

I am your classic, severely troubled Codependent. I am seeing a therapist, but it helps for the first few days, and my fear sets in, and I always go back to him with problems that haven't been solved. This is my first attempt at finding a support group for this. I'm not sure how this all works.