Blog entry for:

a rebel without a clue, or a cause, has often been my rallying cry7. this behavior of rebelling for the helluva it, more than likely goes to the fact that i have never liked being told what i “should or should not” do. it would be quite wonderful to say that once i came to recovery that this behavior and set of attitudes disappeared, but as nice as that would be, the truth is that at times, this subset of my behavior prevented me from getting the most out of what was being offered. but so it goes, these days i worry less about what i am being told and deal with my emotional reaction to it. unlike some of my peers, i have come to a studied respect for authority most of the time and need not rebel just because. there are those times, however, when rebellion is the first thing that rains down upon me.
cops and bosses, not so much as i have learned to accept that they are part and parcel in the real world, and amazingly enough, they really do not reign me in with major violations of my rights. ironically, when i have valid tags on my vehicles and am not burning up the road, they leave me mostly alone. in fact, and here the superstitious part of me steps in, they mostly leave me alone, even when i am exceeding the speed limit by a few miles per hour. i do get that there can and probably will be consequences for that behavior, and that is not a thing to chafe and rebel against.
what this reading comes down to then, is the advice and suggestions i receive, solicited and unsolicited, from my peers that have more days clean than i do. those with fewer, seem to offer fewer suggestions and what they offer most of the time, is exactly what i need to hear, even when it is a bitter and unpleasant truth about how i am behaving or what they see in me. no, for me anyhow, it is those members who have more clean time that give me suggestions or even worse share out loud the most crazy and nuts theories of recovery, the worst being that since there is no model for the recovering addict, any way one works the program, is perfectly okay, because there is no one “correct” way to live recovery. every time i hear that, i just cringe and yes the rebel within starts to scream. i thought of adding what that refrain might be, but decided against it. i can rail here, that in one sense they are certainly correct, BUT, if i want what i see in others, than i MUST do what they did. there is no equivocation or shading there, it is a simple statement of fact, and sometimes those peers have very little of what i want, after all, i know how to stay a member of the No Matter What club, what i need to learn is how to live in the body and life i have been given, without whirling through the world causing drama and trauma. what i need to learn is to separate face from the stories i tell myself about my life and m,y place in the world. what i need to learn is how to become the sort of person i have always wanted to be, even though i am not sure what that person may look like. there are many who have walked this path before me, that can provide me what i think i need and certainly want, and there are those whose offerings leave me wanting something more.
so yes, i can be in rebellion. yes, being in rebellion is not necessarily a bad thing. i can however use the inventory process to see that regardless of whether i respect someone or not, does what they are telling my actually apply? once i strip away the emotional attachment i have formed, it is true, that sometimes i do get something from those members and it is worth my effort to let go and examine such interactions in a cool rational attitude instead of ,my normal hot head reaction. today, i can enjoy my day off and get what i need to get done, and yes maybe even see that i am more than that clueless rebel that walked into the rooms.

∞ DT ∞