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and growing in my recovery.
priorities? there are certainly times when i see my peers, skating through life, seemingly without a care and wonder how it is they stay clean doing very little and i have to apply myself every single day. i feel envious and wonder how they are different from me and all sorts of crap. finally i realize, that i make it look easy to others as well. it is true for me, it is easy too stay clean, but there is a catch, is just staying clean enough?
i can certainly say at eighteen months, i thought i had life by the proverbial balls and could all kinds of totally insane things, such as go visit a using buddy out in New York City. after that brief sojourn into the total insanity of self-will and insanity, i came back, got a sponsor in the fellowship that is my home, and started working my first set of steps, in the manner suggested by this fellowship, forever putting behind me the fellowship in which i got started on the journey.
that was just the first time, i let insanity rule my life. i took a basic principle and justified and rationalized it away, namely, that maybe i was not so powerless after all. well a few days have passed, i still go tom three meetings a week, i still work steps, i still sponsor, i still serve the fellowship, and i still have the desire to stay clean today. i know when i lapse on any of that, i am not growing in my recovery. honestly, the minimal amount of effort i put into my recovery, is certainly rewarded. i am not in the shoes of my peers, who survive on a meeting once a week and very little contact with addicts in recovery, so i do not know what they are really feeling and thinking. i know when i isolate, which is quite different than being alone, i am trapping myself in the Vulcan mind meld with the part of me i call addiction. i know when i brood on how bad things are, or that i am not progressing fast enough in my recovery, i am setting myself up for a slip and fall, maybe not all the way back to picking up, but certainly back to a behavior i would rather be rid of.
i live in the real world, and all i can give is my experience, strength and hope. if those who asked me to provide that gift, choose to ignore it, than do i really need to be all butt-hurt and moody about that? i do not NEED to, but i often am, and that too is part of being powerless. am i punishing my friend and former peer, by making him bear the full brunt of the consequences of his behavior. i would like think that i am not. i would like to believe that it is not out of spite that i decided not to rescue him and a step in a healthy direction for me and in our relationship. my motives here are not quite that pure. i have to admit there is a bit of glee in seeing him suffer and then of course the shame of feeling something so heinously dark, after all, i thought i was better that that today.
i am better than that, and the side-effect of being strong and not caving to my desire to rescue, is that there is a bit of pay back in that as well. and i certainly hate when things are not so cut and dried, which is more often than not, the real story of life in recovery.
anyhow time to get moving down the road, it is a good day to be clean and even though i am opening the meeting for someone i am beginning to see as the nearly departed, i am glad that just for today, i know who and what i am and what i HAVE to do, to keeep that journey intact.

∞ DT ∞