Blog entry for:

mea culpa, my bad, and so on. yup, i make my fair share of mistakes, and when i sit through a meeting listening to my peers mouth the words that they cannot possibly live up to, i often catch myself making comments that are unfair or just plain wrong. of course, the mistakes the reading was about, were not on that nature, specifically, but that is certainly an excellent launchpad into what is on my mind today.
thinking about some of the things my friend and ex-sponsee said the other night, i can see similar behaviors in my own life, especially when it comes down to making mistakes. most of the mistakes that i make boil down to bad decisions, whether i lacked the necessary information, denied what was going on, or was temporarily insane, it really does not matter. in the end the results are the same, i end up having regrets and see a scapegoat of any type, after all, it cannot possibly be my fault. the nature of the mistake and its severity, determines how diligent i am about shifting blame and moving on. once upon a time, i believed i was without much worth and incapable of making any sort of rational decisions. in those days, i would often repeat the same actions and actually get pissed off, when the results were once again not as i desired. no amount of manipulation or prevarication, seemed to changed my life and i certainly had become convinced i was born under a dark cloud, doomed to be a failure or at best, second best, my entire life. i was quite unprepared for the spiritual and intellectual awakening a program of recovery brought to life, within me. as i listened to the hopelessness and desperation the other night, i wondered once again if this was really a turning point for him, or was it once again a temporary state until he started to get his life back. until i finally had enough, and that was not until i was already a fixture in the rooms, i was not ready for the life of responsibility that recovery entails. once i finally accepted that i was the one that needed to change, that i was the one that needed to learn HOW to make good decision, and that i was the only one, who could change the direction of my life, i was finally ready to try something new, stumble along making a mistake or two and learn to learn from the errors i made along the way.
so last night, as my judgement machine was kicked into high gear, i listened i critiqued and i thought “that's nice, but what about your current victim?” i saw myself in those days between coming to the rooms, and before i actually got clean, saying all these wonderful and spiritually sounding sound bites, and believing none of them. i remembered those days of lies and prose, and thought about what i learned as i tripped over the many mistakes that filled those days. i know what it means to put on a show so i can get my family back. i know what it feels like to cling to someone in a new and fresh relationship because i do not want to really look at myself. and most importantly i know how it feels to say, i lied, i actually have 10 days clean and not over six months. last night, it was the part of me i call addiction that was in control of my life and i went for the ride. today, well today, the morning after, i am not happy about that, but i see where i went wrong, i can once again surrender my ENTIRE will and life into the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery and move on, it is after all just another day and a good one to be clean.

∞ DT ∞