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with what is truly good or bad for me. i can change the way i think about the incidents of everyday life, viewing them as opportunities for growth, not as good or bad. this is one of those topics that i seem to get on a very gut level, but i hear the men i sponsor twisting about day in and day out. i cannot speak for them, but the nature of my puzzlement is certainly something i can speak to.
part of who i am at least to this point, is i am my own judge, creating within me a value system with its own yardstick by which i measure how i am doing from second to second. i do not know if this arises because i am an addict or if this is just part of being human, it does not matter where it comes form, what does matter is how it affects me in my daily living. that judge has a constant critique of my life going on in real-time, and colors the way i feel about myself. i have yet to learn how to silence the judge, since most of the time, its criticisms and observations happen below my conscious awareness, what i have learned to do is to counter that judge by hiring one hell of a defender. who is this Perry Mason that almost never loses a case? well that is the part of me that desires recovery and has come to understand that while judgments have a place in my life, they do not have to rule the roost. and most importantly judging which feelings are ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘indifferent’, is not something my judge needs to be doing. feelings are feelings, what is more important, if i really need to analyze my feelings is to get to why i am feeling that way. that is most of the time, another exercise in futility, and being such an activity that i choose not to participate in.
there you have the voice of my advocate, who has probably always been in me, but had its voice silenced by the roar of the part of me that judges me and all my actions. recovery has allowed the advocate to have equal billing and time and as i allow that part of me to speak more often, the judge gets quieter. the advocate was once my spin-meister, of that i am sure, however the advocate no longer gives me an out, rather it allows me to combat the negative self-image that the judge enforces.
so anyhow, a long and rather twitted rambling about the inner workings of my psyche is fun and fruitful, but i need to wrap this up with this final thought. i am more than the piece of sh!t i walked into the rooms of recoveray as. i am far from being a saint, but i am better adjusted and more likely to have a positive outlook on my life and =\who i think i am today. and it is all the fault of those members who i happen to share the rooms with. they have taught me how to be more than i ever was.

∞ DT ∞