Blog entry for:

and live as honestly as i can.
first and foremost on this day of celebration of gratitude, i must say that i am grateful that i am not owned by the part of me i call addiction today. that does not mean i am cured, or somehow i have conquered that part of me and imprisoned it in some tiny little cell, far from the light of day. no what that means is that i have reached an accommodation with the part of me that i call addiction. through acceptance of what i am, and surrendering to that fact, i have reached a spot in my personal growth, that more closely resembles the other 85%, than ever before in my life.
now comes the part, how none of this would be possible without…
well today, i can say with true humility, that i had a great deal to do with where i am. it is true, that without the POWER that fuels my recovery, giving me the power to stay clean, day after day, i would have never got here. that fact i readily acknowledge and accept without reservations. it is also true, that without the guidance and support of the members of the fellowship i would never had had the framework to recognize that POWER or to do the work required. simply put, when i use the resources that i have been offered, and DO the work required to foster my journey through recovery, i GET to become something more than just another addict, scraping for my next fix and wondering when the other shoe will drop.
with all of that upfront, i can humbly say that i am where i am today, because i surrendered, accepted and got off my lazy spiritual ass, and did the work to foster and develop those resources into something more. so here is where i could go into we do this or if you want then you need to, and when i do that i realize i am being weak and feeble. huh? yes, weak and feeble. when i start to change other voice of what i am sharing to any person, save first person singular, i am shifting the focus from myself over to anything or anyone else. i still have FEAR about revealing my true nature to anyone else, so a quick you guys, or we, hides that fact in a puff of spiritual fog, because now i can tell you how to do it, or subsume my identity into the whole of the fellowship i call my home. now what i am talking about here, is not why others may do something that looks the same, i am not them. i am talking about me here. for me, my greatest fear seems to boils down to not looking like i am not a paragon of virtue, a beacon of success and a person who has achieved everything he has always striven for, and yet as i stay clean and yes, allow myself the freedom to work a program and allow that program to hammer me into something more, that fear lessens and i get relief from my obsession with self. it is not all about how i look, even though i hear the echo of the part of me that i call addiction telling of course it is, the world is nothing but smoke and mirrors and what i see, is never what i get. humility, means getting past the denial that everyone does it, so i need to do it as well, to compete and get what i am entitled to, right now.
what is it that i am entitled to, since i broached that subject? i am entitled to the OPPORTUNITY to recover, succeed and live a life free from active addiction. nothing more, and certainly nothing less. which brings me back around to the gratitude i have for getting that opportunity and grasping it, even when i felt i was being force-fed and choked on what i had to do next. gratefully i will make my trip to the grocery store, get what i need to get to make my contribution to the family feast this afternoon and be content that i am not at my destination in recovery, YET.

∞ DT ∞