Blog entry for:

as good, as beautiful, nor as ugly as i think i may be.
that may be the understatement of the week for me. of course, i cannot see myself in all my glory, i was trained NOT TO, and that training does not get re-channeled very easily. so yes, i have been clean a few days. and yes, i have worked steps and have a much better idea of who i am BUT that does not mean i am still not deluded into thinking of myself in an unrealistic manner. after all, never being anything but number two, takes it toll on a soul and learning to accept that although number two may be okay, i still NEED to strive to do better.
all of my life, right up until the day i first got high, i certainly never felt “good enough.” i flat out lied about where i had been, what i has seen and what i had the opportunity to experience. i hid my true self away from others and did whatever i could to deflect the attention off of what i saw were my very glaring and fatal flaws.
using, well using allowed me to slip into a fantasy world, where i could be anyone i needed to be to get what i wanted, and for a while that worked as well. as the years drew on, i got less and less social, and more withdrawn and isolated, and came to tolerate my life as a hermit. walking out to work, and coming home to TV and another get high, with brief excursions out with my few remaining friends on the weekends. this did very little to advance me out of my social awkwardness, and even less for my self-image. it was quite a shock to come out of that fog and find that all those feelings of inadequacy i had as a child, were still there, in those very first days of recovery. well honestly, it was not until i was about three months clean, until i realized that nothing inside had changed in nearly thirty years.
today, well today, i am certainly better than i was. after years of doing this gig, day after day, i am seeing myself for who i am, most of the time, even though those old habits of expanding upon what i think is great and diminishing what i think is not so great, is still part of my behavioral repertoire. bit by bit, i am learning to accept what others tell my about myself, whether it is a compliment, which is the toughest, or a suggestion for a better me. today, well today i am far more accepting of listening to what my family, peers, acquaintances and friends have to say, than i am to my own insidious and toxic thoughts about who i am not. it is however, getting time to head on down to work. life is good, and i am happy to be an active part of it today.

∞ DT ∞