Blog entry for:

to love and be loved. ah the trials and tribulations of being safe. it is true, that when i close myself off from the world, never letting anyone in, the chance of me getting hurt are practically nil. when i as in active addiction them was the odds i liked! even in early recovery, that attitude was slow in being changed. it was so secure behind my walls, i cry and no one would see me. i could be insane and be normal to the outside world. most importantly, by not letting anyone in, i could deny who i was, while presenting to the world a model recovering addict. there is an addict i know, who has never worked a step, attends very few meetings and says he is content with his life the way it is. his belief is that as long as he is succeeding at work and making material gains, he is succeeding at life. he may just be, but i know of no one else, who is as closed off as he is, except myself, before i stopped straddling the party lines and made a commitment to a single fellowship and program of recovery. when i was a hyphenated person in recovery, i could be one thing in one place, namely someone who had a problem with a single substance and someone else in another, a person with a problem with all drugs except alcohol, as that was already covered elsewhere. as a result, i only had to show what i needed to show, let my walls down just the littlest bit, and perpetuate the fraud of recovery for far longer than i needed to. when my New York City, David Letterman adventure scared me sh!tless on a very deep level. i finally asked a man in this fellowship to relieve me ion my self-sponsoring duties. that has made all the difference, as he brutally and persistently battered at the walls that kept me safe for all those years. those walls came down, and what did we find, more walls. sometimes i feel like one of those Matryoshka dolls, as far as these walls are concerned, the hopeful part, is that the walls are thinner and thinner, hence easier to remove as i work the steps.
speaking of which, i wrote on my FOURTH STEP last night and have decide that a little piece on a regular basis is the way to go. it was amazing as i read the literature about the traps recovering addicts with time, like me, fall into when it comes to this step. there it was in black and white, all of what had held me back, the denial and the rationalizations and the bald face lies i used to prevent me from venturing into this particular adventure. i did not start the inventory, but there is now no text between me and the inventory in the step writing guide i am using, so the next time i pick it up, which will hopefully be tonight, the next thing i start writing about is my resentment towards an entire town in Minnesota and ALL the people in it. this is where the walls really started to thicken, and when i started to use to cut myself off from what i saw was a heinous and intolerable reality.
so off it the streets for some exercise and some shedding of hundreds of calories and a gallon of sweat or so. it is a great day to open up and be human, just for today.

∞ DT ∞