Blog entry for:

the one that has given me this new manner of living, is a life-sustaining gift. this gift, one that i was very slow in recognizing, is one that i sometimes take for granted. yes. there are things i am slow learning, and although i can and do beat myself up about these issues from time to time, looking back i can see the reasons. first and foremost, i never wanted to be a member of any fellowship, much less a life in recovery. while i was dragged by the short hairs into recovery, and duct taped to the chair that was waiting here for me, i did all that i could, to emphasize the differences, as the reading so clearly states. my paranoid thinking kept me apart, after all, i was not sure what the members that were here and the ones that came after i did, wanted from me. for me, friendship in active addiction meant giving me whatever i wanted and hoping the price i had to pay was not too great. yes, they were lopsided and lacked any emotional attachment. based on those mistaken notions of human relationships, i was at quite a loss, when it came to making and maintaining friends. in fact, the part of me i call addiction, was certain that staying away from most human relationships was a good thing, as it limited the chances of getting hurt. people were humans, and humans by their nature are greedy, dishonest and self-seeking, or at least that was what i believed when i came to the rooms, and i ignored all evidence to the contrary.
step work, time and mostly a growing desire to be a part of something more, destroyed this part of my belief structure and i cannot say, that becoming a part of the human race and more importantly a part of relationships has been a pain free existence. i had to be lonely enough to realize, that just as i was changing from the self-entitled, self-interested man i came to recovery as, so were the members with whom i was starting to share my life. day by day, step by step, i was rejoining the human race, and was becoming less alienated from the world around me. resistance in this case was futile, for if i wanted what others had, i had to <GASP> do what they did, and becoming friends was what they did. denial and isolation, were no longer working for me, and although clean time does not equal recovery, it certainly has started to add up as the PATH for me to become a member of the fellowship as well as the human race.
as i write this, i am struck by what i heard from a sponsee last night. in the chapter about relapse, it speaks of a return to paranoid thinking. for me, how could i return, if i never left? my delusional paranoid thinking still continues to this day, in bizarre and often obscure ways, especially when it comes to dealing with others, in the fellowship, in my professional life and yes even in my family interactions. i often wonder “what do they want from me now, and am i capable of giving it to them”
today, TO COUNTER THAT THINKING, i have a HIGHER POWER that provides for my needs, as well as a structure of living a program of active recovery. the filters that were so carefully installed and maintained in active addiction, although still present, are more sieve-like than ever before. lots of stuff gets through them and then the filters that i have developed through application of the 12 STEPS, can take over. all i have to do is yes, surrender, and allow the POWER that fuels my recovery, to take care of me, once again. it is a good thing that i have these daily reminders of where i came from and even better the daily reminders of what my journey looks like today, instead of what the end game happens to be. in the long run, every human ends up in the same place, but how i get there is the focus of my life today, not where i happen to be going.
anyhow, today' journey now includes a foray into earning my keep, and that too is something that the program has given me, today. so off to my next task and into this day, with my eyes and my heart open for the opportunity to be on the brighter side of human existence.

∞ DT ∞