Blog entry for:

i am a failure and am going nowhere.
so here i go again, into a weekend, chock full of responsibilities, commitments and very little time for me. the past month seems like an eternity of work, work, work, and no time to decompress and enjoy, except where i squeeze out a couple of hours. the refrain of this sweet whine, is the sound of an addict in recovery who is doing the gig every day, and has come to a place in his life where there is more than the endless treadmill of using, and finding the ways and means to use more. the irony in the reading this morning was not about how much of a failure i am, rather how successful i have become at looking like the other 85%, and how that sort of smoke and mirrors trick is affecting my well-being.
for the most part i find this topic a bit over the top in melodrama, but i understand that sometimes, hyperbole is the only way to get the message across. i also find, that over the course of my recovery, this topic has caused a myriad of emotional responses, based on where i happened to be in my recovery. anger when i was in denial, before the day i finally stopped using. confusion when i was straddling between clean and sober. remorse and regret, when i was in those dreaded middle steps of 4 through 9. today, well today there really was no emotionally reaction at all. i thought it was a bit cornball, a little over the top, but all in all, a topic that was interesting for me to think about and listen to what came to me.
i am no longer a victim of addiction and that is something i NEED to remember. there are quite a few of my peers, i wish would get that notion, namely they too, can stop being the victim to their addiction. nor am i the creation of an unbreakable chain of failure, which is also a refrain i hear often in the rooms, especially from those who are stuck in the revolving door. it was not until i was here for me, and had all the external consequences removed from my life, that i truly started my recovery journey. i may not have been in that revolving door, but i certainly had not yet left the lobby and taken my suite in the recovery hotel.
today, life is sweet in the suite, and when i whine, i must remember that i CHOSE to take on the responsibilities i have in my life. i CHOOSE to maintain my recovery, with all of its attendant consequences. i am who i am, and those pitfalls along this path are just that, pitfalls, that can be avoided or recovered from, one day at a time. so it is off in to this day chock full of whatever comes next.

∞ DT ∞