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these past six days, there has been a battle waging inside of me, about who to trust. two people in my life have told totally opposite takes on a slice of time, and i am seeking evidence to prove or disprove either one of them. what finally came to me last night, and was reinforced as i sat this morning was does it really matter and if it does not, why not just move along and allow circumstances to just play out. i actually do not need to tie my self-esteem trying to figure out who is zooming who! i know what it is like to live a lie and actually get some thrill out of thinking that i was zooming the whole fellowship, the judicial system and everyone into thinking i was not what i had told them i was, namely an addict.
once upon a time, between treatment and my clean date, that was what i was all about. looking like i was something, i never believed i could be, namely an addict living an active program of recovery. back in those days my self-acceptance was based on how well i was fooling everyone else, and as time went along, i got better and better at maintaining that illusion. i have often said in the past, that it was my body and some sort of divine intervention that put an end to all of that. in reality, as i sit here today, it was my enormous ego and my feeling of superior invulnerability that was my undoing. i truly believed i had it all figured out and i could continue to pretend to be clean, in recovery and compliant with the wishes of the justice system, until my number was killed and i was free to return to the “life.” that fairy tale ending was not to be, and through my lack of any sort of humility, i got humiliated and had to come back to the rooms, own the fact that i had been lying for the past six months and start over again with a white key tag, and in that moment i felt like the lowest of the low, and it sucked.
that was on heck of a long time ago, but of all the events from way back when, that night i had to admit to my peers that i had been lying and that i had six days clean, because of course it took that long for the results of my failed test to get back, the feelings of shame and humiliation, i heaped upon myself, were enough to keep me in the rooms, until enough recovery seeped in to make me have the desire to be more than just another addict. i can tell you this, a shame and humiliation based program may have kept me clean, but in the long run, it kept me separate, isolated and alone, even though i had filled my life by accepting my peers as friends and had started the process of becoming a tad bit more social. when i finally became a member eighteen months or so later, i saw what had kept me clean, and that it was no longer going to keep me clean. fear and shame were never great motivators for me, but worked in a pinch. when i finally accepted the fact that i was a real addict, and not just someone with a drug problem, i finally started up the path towards learning to accept myself as i am.
flashing forward to more recent times, i see that the notion i was too damaged to allow myself to love anyone else, was a by-product of that whole let's see how many people i can zoom today and how big of a lie can i tell, mentality. the fact is, that as an addict, when i started this round of steps, i was looking for an out, and what better out than this will be as good as it gets. if i am not going to get any better, the train of thought continues, than why not try a bit of “controlled” using, after all there are 12 step fellowships that suggest that very act, very prominently in their literature and that program has worked for millions. it is a good thing that is not my home and that i have a sponsor. what my problem was and what this set of steps has been all about, was that when i should have been learning how to be social, i was learning how to escape. i had grown to a place where my enormous ego expected i was entitled to others coming to me, because i had clean time and a bit of a pioneer status. what i have learned is that i am their peer, and if i want people to be part of my life I NEED to invite them in. if i want to be connected with my peers, i NEED to allow them the opportunity to see me as i am, not as i would like them to see me as. most of all i NEED to be real and stop trying to zoom anyone else, i am okay, just the way i am today. or at least just for right now!

∞ DT ∞