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as long as i am teachable, ANYTHING is possible. this not only holds true in recovery, but also in the rest of my life. once upon a time, i was certain, that i knew everything i needed to know about life, the universe and everything. the answer is forty-two! there are certainly times in my recovery, where i believed that was also the case. today is not one of those days.
as i went back in the past this morning, i saw that i have only written on this topic once before, and that day, i whined about an incarcerated sponsee not doing his assignment. i generally do not trip the light fantastic, back to my previous posts, and when i did so today, i was struck about how confident i was about what he was doing wrong. over the course of the past four years, i finally came to the place where i realized what i had glimpsed four years ago, that i had nothing left to give him, at least as his sponsor, and i HAD to free him from whatever ties were binding him to me and me alone. that has not worked out for him as well as i would have hoped for, and for me, there is remorse and more than a little bit of pain. yes pain, as in the pain of letting go, which i have done my best to avoid, simply by not doing it. if i allow someone to walk away, the pain i feel quickly fades into my emotional background white noise. if i am the one walking away, i second guess myself, what if myself and generally berate myself, because there should have been another option. in truth, by the time i reach that choice, most of the time, all other options have already been tried and eliminated. right here and right now, as much as it may pain me to say it, there really is nothing more i can offer my former sponsee, as his sponsor, and he chooses to keep our relationship cold and distant at this time.
for me, the past four years have been a journey to returning to a teachable state. it is not as if i was totally unteachable, unreachable and closed-minded, but i was well on my way. i had, after all nearly fifteen years clean, a few step cycles under my belt, and had participated at every level of service. my need to use had been removed and day after day i was discovering that life in the corporate world was not a bad choice. what i could not see, was that i was breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. my finances were quite the mess, my relationship with my peers was barely existent and the image i was trying to portray hardly matched the feelings i had inside. yet i was quite sure that i had this gig down and was growing more and more dissatisfied with the fellowship, recovery and my peers in the rooms. i continued to hang out and hold on, spreading my pessimism and pain down through the men i sponsor, by fostering a dark and cynical look at the program itself. that cynicism remains today, to say anything else would be a lie and one that i cannot stomach today. it has changed though, and today it is a tool that i can use to be more discerning about where to set my expectations. life in the real world, especially for someone like me, is never day after days in paradise. i can always find something wrong, missing or askew, and when i do, i can choose to revel in it, whine about and actively seek to exert what power i may or may not have over it. OR i can choose to see it as as what is is, life in the chaotic world, over which for the most part i have little or no power over. the truth is that out of that chaos and my powerlessness, i can learn the most meaningful lessons, IF i remain teachable, tolerant and open-mined, otherwise, all i do is suffer. when i really look at it, i am not a victim here, but rather a volunteer. i CHOOSE to suffer, because everyone loves a martyr! 😃
with all of that behind me now, it will be interesting to see what i write about the next time this reading happens to come around!

∞ DT ∞