Blog entry for:

feeling that no one really understood me kept me from recovery for many years. not the tense, in the headline it is present and in the run-in here it has changed to the past tense. okay a bit of a subtle shift there, one that is probably not worth noting, except, it is a reflection of how i am today and how i was before i came to recovery. well i better rephrase that, before i accepted that i need a program of recovery, personally and unequivocally. the time between when i first came to the fellowship and when the event of acceptance happened is one of the most interesting chain of days in my life. oh yeah, before you jump on the event -- for me -- accepting that i may have a problem, and accepting that i may want to do something about that problem, and accepting that a program may be the solution to my problem was an event. there was a long drawn out process to get there, and accepted ever since that supernova of self will has been a process, but the sheer magnitude of that acceptance and the speed that which it happened, at least within the confines of my personal space, can only be described in the astronomical terms like nova and black holes, and in time scales that can only be measured by an atomic clock. i digress, and to get back on topic, what was it again? oh yeah, on being terminally unique and how it separated me, and if i allow it will separate me from my fellows in recovery.
so the short part of this is, it is often my insanity, or my particular brand of insanity, that sounds so outlandish and unbelievable, especially to me, that the part of me that wants to save my face keeps the part of me that wants to save my a$$ from speaking up and sharing. if i was one to subscribe to the two in one theories or the lower power theory or even the alien within theory i would attribute that to the addict within. as it is, i am far more comfortable these days just saying the part of me i call my addiction is responsible for this side trip into isolation, as i am quite certain that addiction is part of the whole me. philosophy aside, when i feel nuts, and when i feel that no one could possibly understand, i hear the klaxons of alarms going off all over the place, because once again the filters i developed and maintained in active addiction are being applied, and changing my healthy perceptions into warped and sickly ones. it then follows that i need to share this incident of insanity with someone -- my sponsor, a friend, or even <GASP> in a meeting, out loud, in front of GOD and everyone.
of course the fear, uncertainty and doubt that precedes such an event is magnified out of any realistic expectation, and when i get a set of nervous chuckles rather than abject terror from the people with whom i share, i realize that once again, i am not unique, that my particular brand of insanity is nothing that has not been heard before and that in the long run, letting that cat out of the bag is more than a good thing.
the HOPE? that i may still be a nut case, even after a bit of clean time and after a few steps under my belt, BUT if i open myself up, share whatever is happening, i can continue my journey through the recovery process, without any concern of where and what the final destination may be. so off to the streets on this bright and cheery morning.

∞ DT ∞