Blog entry for:

into a present filled with hope. when i was just a pup in recovery, my first sponse used to ask me over and over again where was i at? i would start to prepare long treatises about the temporal and physical reality, with just enough spiritual location information mixed in to sound good. we would then stop me about 20 seconds in, and tell me to look at my feet and answer the question again. the correct answer is RIGHT HERE! easy, simple and of so elegant, especially for someone like me. not that i came to recovery as a great planner or as someone who consciously lived in shame about my past misdeeds, but i was riddled in FEAR about my past being revealed and my future in a life without the use of substances to buffer me from the winds of life on life's terms.
ever so slowly, bit by bit, step by step, that set of FEAR and SHAME is being removed from my life and my conscious being. the reading focused on the past and the shame my past saddled me with to this day. when i got here, i was so good at lying to myself through the sue of justification and rationalizations, that i really had reconciled my past to a certain point. when the lies stopped working, well relief was just an arm's reach away. with my crutch so close, how could i ever be anything but confident and secure, at least on the outside. the program removed that and all of a sudden i had to face something i was quite unprepared for, ME! one of the gifts of the steps, especially 4 through 9, is the release of shame about who i was, and putting who i was into a perspective and a context about who i may want to be.
am i proud of who i was and what i have done? well part of me is, as there are times i can regale others with hilarious stories of my life in active addiction. honestly, the feelings i get, when i tell my war stories, are often in and of themselves a release and make me feel good. of course there are times when a good round of can you top this, feels wonderful to be engaged in. all of that aside though, my past is behind me, and today, even tough it has made the man i am, i no longer need to be a victim of it.
zooming into the here and now, there are still parts of my past, that i have yet to put into perspective and that is the beauty of the program. since i am part of a sponsorship tradition that stresses the steps, the steps always the steps. i GET to look at what needs to be looked at, even though i have worked steps 4 through 9, more than once. knowing this and living this are far from the same thing. i know where i am,. stepwise anyway, and i am full of FEAR about revealing that chapter in my past. not that what i did was so heinous, as a matter of fact, it was probably the least heinous of the stuff i did to get high. no what is sitting there is a whole pile of unresolved shame, that i am afraid to look at, lest it overwhelm and destroy me. the same old story, written with different words, FEAR and LOATHING in the FOURTH STEP! who knows what today will bring: a meeting, a sit down with one sponsee, some work, a massage, dinner with Mom and Dad, for sure, but what else? i do not know, but what i DO know is that i CAN survive a FOURTH and FIFTH step and be a better person for it. turning that knowledge into FAITH in the process, is where i am right now.
HOW CAN I BE A BETTER ME?
BY, BEING WHERE I AM, ONE DAY AT A TIME!
so where are my feet? getting into my running shoes to go out for a trot around the neighborhood! it is a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞