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i lived a life of utter hopelessness, although i did not know it at that time. denial masked my despair and kept me from seeing how hopeless i had become. so walking into the rooms, it took nearly a year and a half, before i came to realize that i lacked something essential in my recovery, namely HOPE. i could talk as if i had HOPE. practice spiritual principles as if they were second nature to me, as long as everyone was watching, but up until that point, i was still a shell of a person, and just going through the motions waiting for my justice clock to expire. it was not until after i sat down with my sponsor to go over my second FIRST STEP, that i realized how empty my life was and how hopeless i had become, even with a tiny bit of clean-time. at that late date i was still more than certain, that i did not belong here and that it was only a matter of time, and Cinderella would be leaving this this ball.
that FIRST STEP, broke open the flood of emotions and feelings that i had dammed up and for the first time in a long time, i saw what my despair looked like and felt the hopelessness of being an addict with no way out. unfortunately for me, it was not what i wrote that did the trick, it was the hammering of my sponsor,his incessant demands for my feelings and not the pretty words i had parroted back in my writing, that he wanted me to express. that “rat bastard” forced me to open myself up to him and most importantly to me. i had to finally come to terms with a whole lot sh!t and none of it looked anything like what i expected, after all, who the fVck did he think i was?
that was the day that finally started the process of surrendering to the fact that i was an addict, i was owned by addiction and although the most visible sign, my uncontrollable use of drugs, had ceased to be part of my life, i was still at that time owned by the part of me i call addiction. what brings on this sudden flood of the way back whens? well, i took one of the men i sponsor through his FIRST STEP yesterday, and it triggered all sorts of things within, first and foremost, the way i tried to hide behind all the pretty words i had written and take refuge in my ability to avoid feeling by deflecting myself down another path. when my covers were quite thoroughly yanked off and i was sitting there, spiritually “buck naked” in front of my sponsor, i finally saw what i had become and where i could go. it was one of the rudest awakenings i ever had and as a seminal event in y recovery, i am grateful today for the brutally honest direction he provided that day. of course things were not so touchy-feely in those days, and it was just the way it was done. i survived that torching and from the ruins of my self image and the despair i felt about what i believed i could not do, grew the person who is sitting here today, fondly reminiscing about the day he started his surrender.
it is amazing to me, that after a few days in a row, i can still remember those feelings as if they occurred twenty minutes ago. i can still feel the confusion, the anger,the despair and yes the hopelessness, as i was sure that i had been shown that i was broken beyond all hope and incapable of being honest enough with my feelings, to ever move forward. yet, today, i know for a fact that i am an addict and can cease fighting the notion that i have any power over that part of me, or will ever acquire any power of that part. i have HOPE today, that if i follow this path, i can continue to become the man i have always wanted to be, one day at a time. oh yeah, when it comes to STEP work, these days, my current sponsor has put a twenty-five word limit on any answer to most of the questions in the step guide. when i am on a word diet, i can no longer hide behind the language of recovery and i am forced to put into words what it is i am feeling. strange as it may sound, i can write too much when i am working through my steps, and when constrained in such a manner, i get to the point with a whole lot less effort and obfuscation, which is really the goal of any writing exercise i may be working on today.

∞ DT ∞