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and be grateful that i have found it. the sum of my experience since accepting recovery as my new way of living is infinite. i say that with a straight face and no pun or hyperbole involved. so when i say stuff like the longer bi stick around and stay clean, the less i seem to know, it may be me exercising my ego with more than a bit of false humility (i have had more than my share of role models in that behavior), OR it could be just the lack of meaningful words i have to describe the gratitude i feel for the daily gift of recovery. it is true, as this FOURTH STEP is demonstrating that even about myself, there is quite of bit i DO NOT KNOW. without the continual eroding of the internal walls, that IS the result of my ongoing recovery i would have never got here, to start to tap into the terra incognito. so in a sense, because i have stayed clean, i GET to look into and uncover knowledge that was lost to me. although my gratitude for this new “treasure trove” has yet to manifest, as i put this information into the context of who i am, and who i am becoming,. my gratitude will speak for itself and i will come to a place where i SEE and FEEL that i am right where i am supposed to be. just as there is forgotten so-called ‘bad stuff’ lurking within, i am certain that there is good stuff as well, or more importantly what i perceive as bad stuff, is actually a gift i have not yet learned to appreciate. that too, is something that only because i have lived the recover process as long as i have, that i can finally start to understand and accept.
thinking about the interactions i have had with the men who call me their sponsor over the past week, i am puzzled by who i was and where did i acquire the empathy and compassion that i have today. not that it felt compassionate or empathetic to them, more than likely it was probably more than a bit painful. i saw, however, stuff in them, that mirrors the stuff in myself, and i was able to speak from my experience in coming to terms with that pile of wonderful me, served steaming hot in a silver bowl. to stretch a metaphor i heard yesterday afternoon. i am coming to believe that what i do and what i think is morphing from the twisted views that i had when i first got clean, and i am powerless over that change except in two respects. the first being, that it all stops if i use, and the second is, that if i choose to stay abstinent without living a program, all that i have may as well be lost, as i will slowly and inexorably slide back into the man i once was, and that man i know very well and do not really like him at all. it is the man i am becoming that i have yet to know with any great depth or in any detail, and being introduced to him, bit by bit, day by day, is an adventure in learning that is once again becoming something i look forward to today. so yes the longer i stay clean the less i seem to know, or at least the less i am certain that i know.
so off to work i go! it is after all a great day to take responsibility for my recovery. oh yeah, in parting it is not necessarily up to me to ask if you need help, sometimes i am so obtuse that i NEED to hear that request come from your mouth.

∞ DT ∞