i am setting myself up for the same despair and misery i experienced in active addiction. and as i have said many times before, i did not get clean, nor do i wish to stay clean, if i have to be miserable. misery is after all, optional, at least in my experience. i am no longer the primary victim of my addiction, unless of course i choose that as my path today. although, it may seem the easier, softer way, especially when it seems nothing is going right in my life, i know that the relief i may feel is as temporary as the relief i felt way back in my using days. my point? for me, i certainly know how to play the blame game. it was one of those survival skills, that i practiced so well in active addiction that i still want to pull it out of my bag of tricks and see how it still works. when i choose to do so, i can tell you that it does feel good, until my recovery kicks back in, and i can see the damage i have done. damage, wot damage? well to my self-worth, my self-esteem and to my self-respect. yes the damage is to me, and there i go, once again victimizing myself, for the sake of a momentary lapse of responsibility. when i hear the words my addictions make me… come out of my mouth as a preface to some sort of rationalization or justification for what i just did, i cringe. i know that there i went again, falling back into the trap of being a victim of myself. man do i hate that. what really sucks is that for me, i have been taught and i have even a good grasp on the tools that prevent me from doing this again, and yet, over and over again, i find myself back at that same spot. i know that i am only human, and far from perfect, that realization does not come into play, when the beatings about what i just did commence. what i hear in the internal dialogue is that i SHOULD HAVE…
anyhow, where is the HOPE in any of that garbage? well these set of behaviors while still quite accessible, and quite attractive to me on some level, are not my chosen mode of living most of the time. in fact, the whole act out, blame, realize then abuse chain of actions, is one i can stop in progress. all i have to do is be present to listen for the words: ____ made me do ____ . a second later i can pitch that lie, stop the behaviors, allow for my imperfections and move on to doing the next right thing, which i happen to have a fairly good grasp of these days. if a hope to get high and not die dope fiend like me can see some light in the darkness of the morass that is addiction, anyone can. it really is quite simple, and if i allow it to be, even easy, fo;;ow the path i have been put upon and allow myself to be transformed into the man i was always meant to be, one day at a time.
∞ DT ∞