Blog entry for:

my attitude and actions, not those of everyone else.
after the past eight days, i am beginning to wonder who is zooming who? i am pretty certain that i am living a spiritual program and doing my best to foster my growth, and yet time and again, the judgement train starts rolling, drowning everything else out of my head. maybe there is HOPE for the recalcitrant members, who at least keep coming back, but choose to maintain relationships with their old using friends. maybe there is HOPE for those who seem to “know” everything, but cannot stay clean. there certainly is HOPE for those who are clean, but feel “dirty” because of what they are doing, and those who share at meetings just to hear the sound of their own voice. more importantly, at least this morning, there is HOPE for me, the cynical, judgement machine, that roars through the lives of others deciding who is worth my attention. i may not be stuck in my growth in recovery, but i certainly have a thousand excuses of why i should avoid someone, and most of them come down to not getting hurt again. yeah it sucks to invest my time and feelings into someone, and even though i need to learn to have no expectation of return, i still feel the pain and burn if they decide to return to the using life. it is that unconditional part i am not doing very well these days.
of course that makes it very convenient, because the LIE i tell myself is: “based on my past experience, this person is only going to spit in my face, tell me to fVck off, and return to the using life, once again. if i keep my distance, the pain of their actions will be lessened and i will be more forgiving the next time they walk back into the rooms.” blame-shifting and see what you made me do. great work when one can get it. perhaps i should be more like some of my peers and be all about the newest members and let my attention towards them lapse when they get one hundred and eighty days or more. that way, i never form an emotional attachment, i do not take them to far, and i do not invest too much of myself in their efforts to find recovery. safely tucked in the six month cocoon, i could function much easier and those who keep coming back after a relapse could not hurt me again, not too much unlike the one on one relationships, i used to form as p[art of my service work. see them every week for a while, get them started on the program and never see them again, once they killed their number, until i see them back in the place i first met them.
ah, the touch of ironic cynicism there is more than evident, and i guess, it is time to shower off, and start my 50 foot commute to work today. it is a good day to be clean and maybe, just maybe i can move past forgiveness and into a bit of tolerance and even <GASP> acceptance of what life is like in the real world today.

∞ DT ∞