Blog entry for:

i am recovering a whole new life, better than anything i ever dreamed possible.
well first off, this morning, i need to mention that my friend Mike C lost his dad yesterday, just in case one of you knows him and wants to reach out and give him some love and support.
which quickly brings me to the topic at hand: lasting change, beyond my wildest dreams. i can say with total honesty that, if one of my associates lost someone close to them, when i was using, i could mouth the words of sympathy, but really did not feel it. in fact the deaths of my grandfathers while i was running and gunning, provided me two opportunities to take my partying on the road, and party i certainly did. i numbed away any feelings of grief, any connection with my family and any chance of being human, during those times, and it certainly came back to haunt me, once my emotional fog faded in recovery. this is, however not an exercise in grief management or dealing with my feelings, i use that as an example of what sort of person i was when i came to the rooms. i truly lacked the ability to feel empathy or a plethora of other emotions and as the shell of a human being i was, i went through the motions of living in the real world so i could retreat to my cocoon of chemical bliss, locking out all the rest of the world, and not caring i i was slowly but surely removing my emotional connection with the rest of the world.
i know i was not always like that, but i learned early on, that feelings were for wimps and real men, NEVER let the world know what was going on inside. as ridiculous as that sounds, it was my credo and the substances and behaviors i used in active addiction, slowly and inexorably made it so. recovering that notion and the behaviors surrounding it, is not what i have in mind today. today i desire a connection to the real world. i desire more than just associates and using buddies. i desire a full life and am willing to pay the price of a full range of human emotions. today i care and i desire to continue to do so. as a result, when someone i care about hurts, i hurt as well. there is little i can do to take the hurt away, but i can offer my support, allow them to share their pain and perhaps make them smile just a little bit, because they know, that i am not just going through the motions.
speaking of not going through the motions, i need to get into the shower and head on over to my place of gainful employment, which is also new and different. today i am not ENTITLED to a job or career. today i GET to work and i GET to be paid for my work, which i get to spend to maintain a life that i never thought i would have. yes, i am recovering a new life and as amazing as it is, i know that it may actually keep getting more to my liking, if i continue to do the actions that support the changes within.

∞ DT ∞