Blog entry for:

a gift of recovery!
well i certainly could go all sorts of directions with this reading this morning. what i heard and what i am feeling, well, perhaps it does not quite fit, but i will go with it anyhow and do my best to cram it in through a very small opening.
yes, that was a very long sentence, more than likely not grammatically correct. when i stop and think about my life and how connected i am to the real world, it certainly boils down to an exercise in compare and contrast. a quick statement of the obvious: i am far more connected, social and part of a community than i ever was in active addiction. the isolation that was my mode of life, started long before the first time i picked up and was far from over the day i finally got clean. even without the effects of substances hammering home how different i was, i was different, or at least i told myself that. i spent the first thirteen months of my recovery trying time and again to prove that i was far too different to ever let this gig work, and the next six months trying how to fit the program into my life. i just did not want to give up my wall of protection, my self-imposed fortress of solitude, that i so carefully started to craft, years before the first substance ever hit my synapses.
only recently, as in response to my current set of steps, has that barrier between myself and the rest of the world, been systematically dismantled, and now i am starting to get the feeling i have a choice, of who i can hang with and i need no longer settle, just because i am afraid of being friendless and alone. today, protecting myself from others, is not my overarching motive, i can allow others to share my life with me, and i can also say, “so long and thanks for all the fish!”
becoming social, as well as socially acceptable, is part of this whole gig, and both states allow me to be a part of my world. yes i can now say, that i do not want to hang with someone, without worrying if i will be alone forever as the result. more importantly, i can let new people into my life, without worrying when i will feel the knife in my back, spiritually and literally. all of this and more, is a gift of coming out of the isolation of just being me. i can be me. i need not change my behavior to play the local crowd, because today, i need not be the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, even though all that i see is the view from the center of the universe. most importantly getting you to like and accept me, is no longer the driving force in all my interactions, i GET to be FREE, to just be…
however the morning grows late, and whether or not i enjoy gars, or a workout with the dawg this afternoon, has yet to be determined, life is good, and i am grateful juts to be, this morning.

∞ DT ∞