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the more i use it with other addicts and my Higher Power, the more i understand this language. it keeps me coming back.
this was a language that i did not hear at my very first meeting. looking back at those days, i can see that it was not because it was not being spoken, it was because i was deaf to hearing it. for the months following my first meeting, i believed that i had found a place to hide out while the legal storms that i created at the end of my active addiction subsided. so learning this new language was well beyond my capabilities in those days, and actually contrary to my willful actions, i did not want to get better, i did not wish to be free from active addiction, all i wanted was the removal of my legal constraints. even months later, after i finally reached the point bin my life that i was desperate to avoid the consequences of those months between my first meeting and when i decided that perhaps i needed to get clean, i still heard this language as the jabbering of weak willed , cult influenced individuals whose primary goal was to brainwash me into submission.
such a creature was i, that i missed the most important gift that the fellowship had to offer me, namely a place to live where i could find a new manner of living. it is always amazing when i look back on those first months of my recovery, how the hell i stayed clean. i was less than a perfect member by a long shot, and mistook empathy for weakness, identification for sublimation of my will and spiritual principles for religion. well, i made it through that period, and finally learned to understand and start to speak the language of empathy. i am grateful today, that the POWER from which my recovery flows, was strong enough and persistent enough too get me through those dark days and into the light of recovery. so today, when i choose to share and that does not happen very often these days, i find myself speaking about the pain and isolation i used to feel, and how those feelings have been relieved through the process of the 12 steps. the HOPE in all of this, is that is someone as pig-headed and stubborn as i, can learn this language, anyone else can also. i still stumble in this language, but i am certain that with a bit more practice i will continue to become fluent in the language of empathy, it is after all one of those gifts that i get without having to ask for it.

∞ DT ∞