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okay this whole idea of my values being less than **real** when i got here, is more than a bit insulting. those ideals may not have been stellar, and based on rationalizations, justifications and lies, but they were real just the same.oops, now i am sounding like one of my peers, but my point is not that i lacked any values, the values i came to the rooms with, are not the values i hold dear today. i was not, and had no intentions of ever being a responsible and productive member of society, and yet here i am.

Kathy Mc, the love of my life,
Congrats on 15 years of “just for todays.”
I am grateful you came, you saw and you conquered my heart!

the point of this reading, at least the one i walk away with this morning, is not that i did NOT have values, rather the values i had did not enhance my life, nor did they contribute to my social standing or anything else i may have desired, beyond my next fix. those values were certainly real, and more than likely saved my sorry a$$ more than once, however when i came to recovery and removed the get high from the equation, i began to feel, yes something that would warm the cockles of my sponse's heart, a dissonance between how i behaved and how i thought i needed to behave. the values that i lived by, were not the values i wanted to continue to live by, and hence my journey out of my heart of darkness.
fast forward to today. today, i look back at the values i espoused and wonder how it is i could ever get to where i am today. i am certain that self-entitlement, self-obsession and just plain selfishness, ruled my life, coloring all my relationships, as transactional as they were. everything devolved down to what can i get from you and how much will i have to pay for it. everything had a cost, and even seemingly altruistic behaviors on my heart had an ulterior motive. the notion of doing something for someone and not taking any credit for it, was certainly a foreign concept and one that i never thought would become one of my values. after all, how would i get what i deserved, if no one knew that i did it?
i could go on, but doing the next right thing, for absolutely no reason at all, and without any expectation of reward, is what i am certainly about today. i do not practice this with anything close to perfection, but i am much further along than when i walked into the doors of recovery. anyhow, speaking of that, the time has come to get moving the very short distance to work today. it is a great day to be clean!

∞ DT ∞