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i come from backgrounds where betrayal and insensitivity among friends was a common occurrences. i had hundreds of experiences bearing out my conviction that people are untrustworthy. yet my recovery demands that i trust people. so the past two times i wrote on this topic, i was faced with a dilemma. i am not quite certain if that dilemma has been resolved, people are still human, full of all those things that make them human. good, bad or indifferent, all of those oh so human traits, make dealing with others far from predictable, and far from serene. so then you throw addiction into the mix, and the warped sense of self and entitlement kicks in, and voilà i am more than justified in my misgivings about trusting them. justified or not, my life depends on finding the support i need, to stay clean today and most importantly live a program of recovery to the best of my ability. i can, as i have been doing lately, dwell on the negative sidse of those members with whom i interact, and let my judgement place them into the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ classes, and go from there. and perhaps that is not to bad of a thing, i can trust both classes, however i am more apt to take direction and listen to someone in the ‘winners’ group, than thew latter. building on that thought, i am far more apt to trust that class with what i need to trust them with to allow myself to recover. and most importantly, i am far more apt, to accept what they say, with little doubt, or digging deeper for their motives.
so my dilemma today, is not how to stop that judgment process, that is part of my human character, but rather how to allow those who have been classified as ‘losers’ in my little system to be trusted by me. they are, after all, as the reading says, doing their level best as they know how, to live a program of recovery. letting go of my FEAR, UNCERTAINTY and DOUBT and surrendering those traits into the care of my HIGHER POWER is a good place to start. listening without the internal judges screaming in my ear, is another step i can take. both of those actions in concert may not stop the classification process, but it will certainly give me chance to get what i need, B.y T.he W.ay -- clean time is not necessarily a requirement to make it into the the ‘winners’ bracket, in fact, my judge seems to give far more latitude to those members who are new in recovery and judge more harshly those who after a bit of time ought to know better. so off to deal with a few household chores while the day is still cool enough to work outside.

∞ DT ∞