Blog entry for:

inadequacy, rejection, and lack of direction can still haunt me today. the masks have got to go reading, one of the few that hit home year after year. i know why this reading in particular is always so poignant, because it goes to the root of my identity. well maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, at least most days, but it certainly fits me like a glove, as maintaining appearances and showing the world something i am not, is a very old, well-rehearsed part of my current repertoire of behaviors.
this morning, as i listened to what was going on inside my head, i kept coming back to something in a letter that i received yesterday. the author of that letter took any boundary setting of discussion of my feelings as negative and when i blathered on about nothing at all, those are the positive letters. he also has a lot of esteem tied up in how many words i write, and if my latter is too short or lacking fluff filler material, he gets all butt hurt as it does not match the volume of what he writing. i mention his reactions to my actions, not to criticize, although there certainly is a mountain of stuff to address, rather to illustrate the feelings that i can and often have, feelings that measure my esteem by the volume of all sorts of social interactions that i may have in any day, and often come up on the short end of that calculation, hence the fronts that i have so carefully built up and maintained across the course of active addiction.
yes, those fronts saved my life and allow me a level of protection from the slings and arrows of living in the real world, or at least that is a tenet of the belief structure that i owned when i arrived in the rooms. trust no one, show only what i need to show and never, ever, let anyone know that they can hurt me. like some sort of twisted mantra, those were the words that dis and often can echo through my head, each and every time i start to talk to someone, be they a social contact, a business contact or a peer in recovery. the less surface area i present, the harder it is for them to gain any traction on me. it makes the world rather cold, but certainly a whole lot safer, because than i do not end up beholden to anyone, nor does anyone become my higher power surrogate.
ah time to come into the light. after that bit of dark cynical look at myself, i could just walk away and say yuppers that is who i am, but that too would be dishonest. that is who i was, and still can be, some of the time. this set of steps has been all about finding my place in the world around me and in my complex web of relationships, and being okay letting others in. one may assume from thew fact that i write this every day and have done so, that i am comfortable about talking about myself, and one would be quite wrong. i am never comfortable sharing any part of myself with anyone outside of a very few trusted souls. part of the point of writing and posting this, is to allow myself to learn how to be open and let go of whatever it is that i am trying so desperately to hide. when i write my friend back, he will definitely see it as a negative letter, because i am going to tell him that mistaking impatience for desperation is not a very sound idea. expecting others to perform on his timetable and to his standards will not net him any gains and it will certainly drive me away, as i am no longer playing that game. today, well today, i will be who i am, dark, cynical, and circumspect, but also kind, generous and loving. i am no longer the cartoon character that walked into the room, behind a kaleidoscope of fronts to fit the each and every social situation i faced, but i have yet to toss them into the bit bucket either. just like anything else in my life, when FEAR raises it ugly head and i cannot flee, i have a mask to pop on and be quite comfortable behind, even if i am crapping my pants!
my life is good today and i think i will do whatever i need to do, to stay clean today and enhance my journey into becoming the man i have always wanted to be.

∞ DT ∞