Blog entry for:

that i can no longer function as a human being. ironically, what i was going to write about this morning had little to do with being at the end of the road and more about a new way to live. time, a meeting and talking with a sponsee or two, has changed what i hear when i read this now.
if one had asked me, back in the day, if i was at the end of the road, i would have said, HELL NO, i have all that i need to survive. it was without a doubt a survival from day to day, at least in a spiritual and emotional sense. this time of year is always difficult for me, for a number of reasons, that i choose not to enumerate today. suffice it to say, that as tough as it may feel today, it has been much worse and as a matter of fact, today, i do not feel all that bad, in fact, i am glad that the interpretation of what was suppose to happen at the end of the Mayan long cycle, was all just hot air and pipe dreams. it makes me wonder what those folks were taking. a new cycle? yes, a new world? well maybe, the world could stand a bit of refreshing. so back to what came to me as i sat down to pound this out.
thinking about what my life looked like back then, i was certainly at the end of a road, 16 years ago, i thought my life was over, and in a sense it was. it was the beginning of a new cycle in my life. the long cycle of active addiction was coming to an end, i just did not realize what that really meant. 15 years ago, i was just starting to get a clue, what that meant. today, well as i walk through each day, i am most clueless what it means anymore. one of my friends made a comment about something i wrote seven years ago, so i had to go back and read it. yes the chess match continues, even though some days it feels like the addict part of me is advancing to trap my queen, it certainly is how i felt 16 years ago, before tasting the fruits of recovery. envy and anger at what i saw everyone else having, was all i ever felt. denial kept me from acknowledging those feelings and i was certainly about to be checkmated. then BOOM the board got tipped, and i got to start the match over, with a whole new set of rules and all of my pieces coming back one by one. more importantly, the longer i play, the better equipped i become to play with the part of me i call addiction. yes, some are sicker than others, and i was one sick pup when i was forced into a life of active recovery. along with the return of my full range of human emotions, i also got the gift that i was once so envious of, the ability to be okay in my own skin and feel a part of the world around me. although the invulnerability of only feeling a bit of what is going on, and living in a ghost-like state, is something that i think about nostalgically, it really is not something i want to implement today. as tough as it is in the dark of the season for me, i was reminded today, that yes i can look at the joy of others, as an inspiration, instead of a curse. so when the dark days wear me down, i can and will remember that the darkness passes auto-magically and that as dark as it may feel from time to time, i have more than enough light in my life to persevere and yes thrive another day. today i have that ability and do not require a substance to lift me from where i can be. after all, the POWER that fuels my recovery, does provide me a way out.

∞ DT ∞