Blog entry for:

the more i learn to trust myself.
this could be about who i learned to love to trust, by becoming trustworthy myself.
OR
this could be about the process of learning to trust my sponsor by dropping what i affectionately refer to as “trust bombs” and seeing what happens.
while both of those trains of thought are valid for the reading today, it was not what i heard in my very abbreviated version of listening this morning. this morning i just could not sit still and stop telling myself tales of woe and anguish. so i moved forward with my morning and have arrived at this point.
a quick recap, i was never a good liar, still do not lie very well, but i was master of disguise, hiding in plain sight, deceit and manipulation. when i chose to, i could sell ice-cubes to Eskimos, as the ancient meme goes. walking into the rooms, of recovery, i assumed that was going to serve me well, and for the first seven months of planned using and deceitful abstinence, it seemed to be working. as in i was getting away with doing just about anything i wanted to, after a few speed bumps such as nearly six weeks as the guest of the Boulder County Sheriff's department. so when my cover got blown away, and i had to do something or spend time in a less than pleasant place, i started to change. that transformation took thirteen months, and set of steps, a sponsor and a fellowship switch. even then, it was nearly another six months before i trusted enough to get a “real” sponsor. across the course of that time, over two years, i finally reached a spot where i was desperate to actually do something and that meant learning to let go of who i thought i was and allow someone to help me launch my journey of discovery into finding out who i was and am. and so it goes, here i am many days later and i look back on what i was, and wonder how anyone could have trusted the man i was.
which brings me back to what seems to be what i really felt this morning, which was going to be about some former peers and my relationship with them. as i started to type about the feelings of pain and betrayal, i have felt, i realized that was my pain, not theirs. they did and do what they need to, and i move on. today i owe neither of them anything and if i hear “don't take that personally” one more time i will certainly act out. the fact is, as part of the relationship we built, everything becomes personal. every accusation of betrayal and violation is insulting. ever snub, a stab in the back and worst of all, to come crawling back asking for dispensations to alleviate the misery that they have created, insulting to the max. and yet, i wonder how i would treat my sponsor, if i was in their situation.
would i try to cash in all the favor chips, i thought i was entitled to?
would i accuse him of doing me wrong, in a drugged state of psychosis?
would i call him, begging for money and angry when he tells me he has given me everything he has and has no more left to give?
would i lie about my clean time, to look better than i am or develop a yarn about when i actually used to make someone else feel better about themselves?
i would hope not, but the reality in those situations i am sure i could, and would do all of that and so much more. in fact i would RELY on the relationship i had built with my sponsor to seek whatever it was that i needed to seek, to be more comfortable in that using life. or worse, slink around the edges of the fellowship shamefully avoiding his gaze and pretending i am far too fVcking good to be there. no i would squash our relationship like a fat old cockroach and get whatever i needed out of it, before moving on to my next victim.
so as i sit here, putting myself in a situation born from the use of that very first substance, i can understand what value i would place on the carefully nurtured relationship that i have built up with my sponsor across the days we have been working through it. it would be like using a anti-griddle, everything good and wholesome about that relationship would flip to the opposite and be used for my own nefarious reasons and i would hurt the person who has helped me grow the most, just because he KNEW who and what i was.
anyhow, that certainly took an interesting turn and although there is not a whole lot of HOPE in the text above, i can say this:
today, i am clean. today i trust my sponsor and he knows who and where i am. today, i am grateful that he holds all the cards and yet treats me as a peer and another person in recovery. and today, the hour grows late and it is time to ease on, ease on down the road, trusting that no matter what i can stay clean today.

∞ DT ∞