Blog entry for:

i must be as completely and consistently honest with my friends as i can be. there is the loophole, i can always dive through, the same one that i use to keep myself from the self-flagellation of NOT living up to the spiritual standard i believe i SHOULD be living up to.
it was sunny and nearly 50 degrees when i finally crawled out of bed this morning, it is now 22 and getting extremely nasty out there, all in the course of sixty minutes. what does the weather, as chaotic and ever-changing have to do with how much i allow my friends and peers to see who i really am? sometimes, well most of the time my spiritual weather, is in just as much flux and is a chaotic and ever-changing system. sure i want to be better. i want to have an always sunny disposition. i want to be kind, loving and someone who can be counted upon, BUT that is not what really happens. most of the time i am certainly somewhere in between “daisies, unicorns and rainbows”, and “demons, doom and gloom.” “the best i can” and “to the best of my ability” are the catch phrases that allow myself to excuse my misbehavior. how all of this plays out in my life and my interactions with the world around me, is that there is a constant battle to appear better than i actually am, and the desire just to be me: as fractured, disingenuous, and self-deluded, as i happen to be at that moment in time.
i am fortunate that i have friends and peers, who reflect back the image of myself in the here and now, and i can readjust how well i am living up to those impossibly high standards that i have somehow set for myself.
once upon a time, and some days that time feels like yesterday, there was an addict who walked into the rooms, certain that he was not about to allow himself to get brainwashed by the zombies and automatons that he thought comprised the fellowship that had all the answers he was seeking. he was unwilling to let go of what he “knew” and certainly never going to let any of those so-called “freaks” into his life. that addict, landed in the wrong fellowship, but to him that was a good thing, as here was a place to hide, after all it was all about a substance and he saw that conveniently the literature in that fellowship treated his favorite, go-to substances as an outside issue. all he had to do, was hang out there for two years or so, and his life could return to what it always had been. he had not, as the book says, seen past the denial that was keeping him down and for him, way back when that was not a bad thing, or at least that is how it appeared on the surface. he worked the steps in a very shallow and cursory manner, stayed clean, and as the days passed, continued to feel more isolated and alone that he was before, BUT he told himself over and over again, “ that this too shall pass!” and it certainly did. then in a group of people just like him, the light of something different broke into the darkness of his closed mind and here many days later, he sits, writing about intimacy and honesty, and allowing himself to taste the freedom from active addiction one more day. my i spiritual weather went from eternally dank, dark and threatening to a state of flux. dank and dark sometimes, sunny and warm at other times. my desire to hide who i was, becomes more diminished across thew course of time and yes some of the things that i do, do not seem to fit the pattern of the model recovering addict. part of being real, and human, is to acknowledge that what looks wrong is sometimes the correct thing to my friend, who is struggling in the end stages of active addiction, more than likely feels that i have abandoned him. i refuse to be at his beck and call, and as a result he refuse to come to my terms about what i feel is the right path for him to follow. no i do not necessarily think that locking himself away fro two years is the best thing for him, but 72 to 96 hours in a medically supervised detox, just may be. naturally, although he is almost ready to do so, it has to be on his terms, after yet another conversation and at the time of day, he wants it to be, generally late in the evening, when i am at the end of my day. in one of these movements, i may allow him to “win” and play the game he so fVcking desires me to play. do i really like keeping him at arm's length and making him choose to meet me on my terms? no, not really. what i am doing is assertively enforcing the distance i need to have, in order to keep myself from getting swallowed in the maw of active addiction, after all, he does have access to the one combination of substances that i have always wanted to sample. acting out of self-preservation, is tough, but if i want another day clean, well i just got to do what i have been doing. yes, part of that is to allow my friends and peers to see who i am, struggles and all. even more importantly take what they tell me to heart and allow their wisdom to penetrate those dark places that still exist within me.
to me, that is the nature of intimacy and the gift i get from a life of active recovery.

∞ DT ∞