Blog entry for:

for the a second day in a row, all my ideas got wiped out by an errant slip on the keyboard. where i was once going, has been lost in the bit bucket, and at least i get to choose a new, possibly similar direction, without a whole lot of self-abuse, self-flagellation and self-abasement.
hen i finally became a member i hardly felt “clean” even though i had nearly eighteen months of abstinence. part of that feeling was because i was under a criminal penalty not to use, and the sword of the consequences if i got CAUGHT using was enough to instill enough FEAR in me, to stay clean, no matter what. even in those days, i had a very methodical program, i prayed to the concept of GOD that i had “borrowed” from my first sponsor, read the daily reading, went to lots of meetings and went upon my merry way, blithely or purposefully ignorant of the peril i had put myself in. even though i had “worked” STEPS TEN and ELEVEN, they were not part of my daily program of recovery, they, like the rest of the steps, had been worked just well enough to keep me clean and not one jot more. so i felt like a fraud, a recovery shill, going through the motions, but skipping any of the meaning. it was quite a wake-up call when i came back from my adventure to the David Letterman show, and had done everything up to the point of using, that any using addict did. so when i asked someone to sponsor me, i felt ashamed and certainly did not feel worthy of any sort of forgiveness. here i was a pillar in our very small and nascent recovery community, in active relapse and without any sort of remorse. it took many days, step work and learning how to live a program of active recovery before i could forgive myself. my deep dive into committee service was part of my penance for being such an outsider and splitter.
when i started this set of steps, most of that garbage had been dealt with and thrown out. i had forgiven myself. i had turned shame into remorse and i had become the sort of person who someone might actually like to hang out with, from time to time. the problem was, no one but me and my sponse knew that, as i had absolutely no clue on my place withing society and especially in the bustling thriving recovery community that has come about across the years. the garbage of who i once was, kept me from being a part of what my peers had built and i lacked the ability to forgive myself for the mistakes i made way back in the day, that could have doomed the community before it really got started.of course, i see how self-centered that was, and have come to see, that all that is worth forgiving myself for, and when i can start to forgive myself, i can of course forgive others, even those who i feel did me so fVcking wrong that they should burn in hell forever!
these days, i still judge my peers, and look at the quality of their programs. what i do not do, is speak out loud, what i hear screaming in my head. i have learned that not everyone wants my opinion and my opinion may not even be accurate. my sponse asked me why i shared so infrequently at the meetings i attend, and i told him that it was for a couple of reasons. someone has already shared what i though t i needed to share, or i was bristling with anger and judgement at what someone else had just shared. in either case, repeating bumper stickers and memes or sharing at peer who just does not “get it,” is just not what i am about today. today i can forgive myself for having a judgement about what someone has just said, and allow myself the freedom to move beyond that. today i can forgive those who have to repeat the same trite clichés over and over again, because i really do not know where they are. today, i can forgive those who may have harmed me, because once again, i have yet to learn how to peer into the minds of those i share the world with,m and until that time, i am clueless about what is really going on. today, i can empathize with the member whose shame is keeping them from talking to their peers, out of meetings and making them miserable, because i know what that is like. if that is forgiveness, than i am certainly there, at least right here and right now, but i have yet to walk out my door and face the real world. one will see what happens when i get moving, but all in all, it is a good day to walk out with an attitude of forgiveness rather than entitlement.

∞ DT ∞