of **what if** and more comfortable with what is. so after a week of wondering why, why why, i left a meeting so angry, it finally came to me, the meeting was no longer focused on recovery, but had morphed into a meeting focused on the children brought by the members. in fact it had changed so much, that most of the shares were about the children playing in the center and not about carrying a message of recovery. sad as it is, i wonder what sort of message that gives to the still struggling addict, especially a newcomer. i want to walk away and say it is none of my business, that soon enough it will swing back to a meeting where recovery and not the children are the focus of the meeting, and the big “what it” that screams in my head is: “
what if i say something and then everyone hates me, because i hate their children?!” before i get branded as a hater, i understand that child care costs money and single parents need a meeting as well. i also remember what happened when children were left unsupervised in the nursery at the facility, so i get the why, but perhaps it is time to seek a better solution, just saying. i have a few more weeks of engagements on that particular night, so that bridge has yet to be crossed, and what is, is that i can be okay at getting to what is bothering, rather than exploding all over my peers, friends and acquaintances. and who knows, perhaps things will change without me being present, as i have very little desire to go to a meeting where the message is not on who to recover from addiction today.
living in the fantasy world of “what if” allowed me the FREEDOM to escape from the reality of day to day life. what if i win POWERBALL? what if i hook up and end up falling in love? what if i trust someone and they end up burning me? what if monkeys fly out of my a$$. on and on, the litany of “WHAT IFS”can go and in the here and now, i lose the focus on what i means to be clean today, and accept life on its own terms. i worry about the imaginary world of not now and refuse to react, or decide about the now.
so i was going on and on about what the world of “what if” looks like for me, and decided that i am quite sure my point has been made. what is real is that i am an addict. i look at the world through a lens of self-centered obsession, if it does not fit my version of reality, i get pissed off and petulant, hence my anger after the meeting last week. when i decide that maybe i did not hang the moon, then and only then, do i have a chance to be more of what i want to be and less of what i was. today, i want to be the center of effort to stay clean and live a program of recovery, and not necessarily the center of the world.
∞ DT ∞