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i wanted the serenity, the cars, the happy relationships, the friends, the closeness with our sponsor. what i did not want was to the do the work necessary to get these gifts. yes, even i felt ENTITLED to gifts like these when i came to the fellowship. not right away, as it took a bit of time for my head to get pulled from my a$$. then i needed to wait for the jones to subside. BUT as all that was happening, i was actually doing a bit of the footwork, and when it came to that place in the particular tradition i was then following where it made all sorts, well twelve, promises, then my self-entitlement became active. i wanted all of those things, and i had cause to expect them to be manifest in my life, after all it said so in that book, that ;large piece of literature that was written way back in the 1930’s. much to my dismay, none of those promises were manifest in my life and neither were the things listed at the start of this blog. i came to recovery with a car, BUT for the most part, my first eighteen months clean were a struggle between waiting for something, anything to happen and if i was in the correct fellowship. the truth is i was not, and after i finally got a sponsor in the fellowship in which i truly belonged, and started to work some steps in the tradition of that fellowship. then things started to happen. i still had the car and i had brief moments of serenity. so what changed? well inside of me, i realized that even if i was doing the footwork, living a program, and everything else, i was not entitled to anything, except another day clean. i realized that was the reward for doing the deed, and nothing more. to expect more was to set myself up for disappointment and resentment. that does not mean that i stopped hoping for more. in fact that is when i realized the difference between living a day in HOPE and living a day in EXPECTATION. i can always HOPE, and although some of the things and events i HOPE for are pretty outlandish and have little chance of coming to fruition, most of what i HOPE for is well within the limits of actually coming to pass.
honestly, i still want everything, and i still want it right now. i understand that is part of me, and that part is hard-wired into the part of my i call addiction. i will never be satisfied with what i have. that NEED, or at least what feels like a NEED, is losing its power over me, most days, and i know that is only when i choose to walk the road of active recovery. i can allow myself to wallow in misery as i look at what others have achieved and have been given, or i can choose to be grateful for what has been given to me. the old half full half empty argument, but today i am grateful that i have a something to fill, and so care how full it is.
so off to the streets and into this bright and chilly spring morning.

∞ DT ∞