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by anonymity, is not a symptom of shame for me.
i have always maintained a certain level of anonymity in my dealings with my extended family and since i returned to the corporate world my employers. one of my motives might have been i was ashamed of being an addict, as i heard one of my peers so eloquently express in the meeting last night. i certainly know, that way back when it was because i did not think i was an addict, had a drug problem or would be spending any length of time in the rooms of recovery, just like another of my peers, when the legal sword was lifted i was quite certain i would be gone in sixty seconds.
three years ago, on FaceBook, i stated what i was and how grateful i was for fifteen years of clean time and all of a sudden, my extended family was invited in to my world of recovery. u8p to that point, i was more than a bit circumspect with them, one might even say, i locked that fact away in the vault never to be opened. after a while what i resolved to do, mostly for the sake of my parents and their standing within my dad's family, seemed to fade to background noise and when i was overwhelmed by the magnitude of fifteen years clean, i spontaneously outed myself as an addict in recovery, to all of my FaceBook community.
since as, the above example demonstrates, i have never been one of those “shout it from the rooftops” kind of recovering addicts, the crux of this post needs to get down to my motives. in the purest sense, it would be wonderful to say it is because i was practicing humility, but i am fairly certain that was not the case until very recently. in fact, i would be nearly certain that my protection of my anonymity had more to do with “looking good,” rather than feeling or behaving good. just because i have no shame about being an addict today, does not mean that was always the case and certainly my desire to appear better off than i am, certainly weighs heavily when it comes to to re\\veal myself in all my addict glory. with my family, it has simplified my life, they have developed a certain sense of respect for me, and i can just be me, when i am with them. with my friends, well most of them are in the recovery community, so the truth of the matter is already well revealed. at work? well at work, i plan to protect my anonymity because, they simply have no need to know, and what would revealing that fact to them really accomplish. when they have beer-thirty, i just do not imbibe. i need not wrap my teetotalism up in any excuse, justification or snappy comeback.
so will i do a major shout-out on FaceBook this year? maybe in one of the private groups i belong to, i really need not rub any of my family members faces in what i am and who i have become. what i want them to see, is the man they never got to know, because i was incapable of being present and never wanted to own that my family came from Montana. what i want to express, is that although i am grateful to be clean, treating my recovery7 with a gentle “fight club” filter keeps me from taking more credit than i am due and allows me the freedom to make a mistake or three, as i walk through my just for today. today, i just want to be clean, live clean and all the world to ignore the fact that: “here be dragons,” if i choose to try something different than another day as a member fo the No Matter What Club.

∞ DT ∞