Blog entry for:

quite honestly, it was difficult for me to sit still and listen this morning. my service commitment and how to fit it into what i want to do today, was just one of the topics that crowded out that quiet time. that quickly passed and then the litany of my peers and their behaviors, started rolling through. what i ended up walking away with, and i did get something from what appeared to be an exercise in futility, was a stark comparison between who i was and who i am becoming. i am recovering from a life where self- was paramount, and knowing a few simple facts about my friends and peers, was irrelevant and certainly not worthy of my time. last night, i GOT to witness a peer who is fast becoming a friend collect a token of his first year of just for todays. when i texted him, my message of congratulations on Tuesday, his clean date, he responded back, by sending me what it was like for his family a year ago. today i get to give up being self-absorbed for long enough to acknowledge the milestones in the lives of others and wonder whether my peers on the margins will ever give up their reservations of being different and way too cool, to get this recovery gig. i can speak with a bit of authority on that little twist as being “way too cool for school,” was my attitude when i was on the margins for those first eighteen months of my recovery journey.
it is certainly strange, end up being a friend, and who remains just a peer, when it comes to my recovery. when i came to the rooms, i certainly did not need any friends, as they were a waste of m,y resources and time. staying clean, but separating and isolating myself from those in fellowships, was not exactly the healthiest path for me to take, and truth be told, i never let my first sponsor, begin to see who i was, all those days ago. i showed him just enough to keep him off my back and was satisfied with taking that relationship just that far. hanging around after meetings and going bowling were activities i saw as beneath me, and as i drifted further and further back towards the isolation of active addiction, i never doubted for a moment that when i could do so with little or no consequences, i would be high again. recovery was just plain dull and uninteresting and certainly not my gig.
my flirtation with self-sponsorship and its very abrupt end, after i put myself into a very wrong situation, far from home and certainly far from the watchful eyes of the 20TH Judicial district, was the beginning of the end of my hopeful return to my world of “self.”
as i sit here today, many days past those fateful and frightful events, i know that i certainly never really wanted to “recover” that lifestyle, no matter how much i tried to convince myself that i did. what i wanted was the ease of mind, just a quick little sumthin', sumthin' could provide. what i GOT was a manner of living where i do keep track of recovery milestones of my friend and peers, and acknowledge them when they happen. what i GOT was i GET to be a person, who invites people into my life, instead of grudgingly allowing them in. what i GOT was a transformation form the world of self, self-absorption, self-entitlement, self-abasement, into the world full of all sorts of people, many of whom i actually want to be in my life. today, it does not seem to be my choice who will or will not become close to me. today it is not my choice who will be honest and open and who will remain secretive and duplicitous with me. today, i GET to choose to be clean and decide whether or not i want to practice a program of active recovery, or just get by. today, i know i am not the lying, cheating, thieving creep that walked into the rooms, today i can be so much more than that and that is the result of those who snatched me back from the margins, once i was ready to come in from the cold. yes today i am RECOVERING a life i never had, and i am grateful that no one ever gave up on me, even when i had already given up on myself. that lesson is thew one i will carry forward, because who knows, there just may be someone out there on the margins, white-knuckling it, that wants what i have to give.

∞ DT ∞