Blog entry for:

looking better is certainly important to me, always has been, and for right always seems it will be. when i was using, i did my best to NOT look like an addict. i bathed, i shaved, i wore clean clothes and i covered my tracks, figuratively and literally. all of that effort into looking like something i was not, carried right on over into recovery, and dogs me still to this day. before i down that track:

Wayne,
Congrats on a decade clean
Thank You for being part of my recovery!

all of that work to look socially acceptable, and what did it end up getting me? a trip or two through the twelve steps and a lifetime of becoming the man i was always meant to be. ironically, working with another addict yesterday, that exact question was asked of me, and i deferred answering it until he reached step 11, as it is a better fit there than in step 6. i digress.
becoming socially acceptable and actually becoming part of society outside of the rooms is certainly an gift of recovery. unfortunately it feeds a lie that the part of me i call addiction likes to foster, namely that maybe all of this work is for naught, as i am not really an addict. that is the lie that never dies, and as i go to work and interact daily with the other 85%, without stepping into a pile of sh!t, i get more and more evidence, that can be twisted to support that contention. i look clean, because i am clean. i look and feel socially acceptable ONLY because i have used the 12 STEPS to become socially acceptable. the evidence is not what i have become, but what i came to recovery looking and more importunately feeling like, in contrast to my life right now. nevertheless, i want to forget what life was like on the outside looking in, even though i am just barely in these days. i want to think that the life i have today, is the life i have always had, even though, way back when, i could barely manage to scrape up enough emotion to cry when my wife left me, and even that was because of what she was doing to me. today i do care, and although lots of time has passed i still remember that keeping my distance, is how i keep from getting hurt, and the mantra that rings in my head, as i become more social is that if you let them in, they will end up hurting you! how socially acceptable is that? :)
no today, i can be there for my employer, which means wrapping this up and heading south, for my family, for my significant other and her family, for my peers in recovery, for my friends and for the men who choose to call me their sponsor. most importantly i can HERE for myself and even though i look like a “normie” on most days, the truth is that i am not, and right here and right now i can revel in that realization. it is after all a good day to celebrate independence from active addiction!

∞ DT ∞