Blog entry for:

love ourselves.
A couple of mashed up ideas popped into my head this morning, the first being a sound from the eighties that was played at the resort the other day, and has been stuck in my head ever since. One song from my limited IPAD collection will take care of the Candy Man edible wrappers and all.
The second part of this mash-up is the very first reaction I had when I heard the statement: “we will love you, until you learn to love yourself.” I can sincerely say it was nothing like the one described in the reading, in fact i truly thought I was in the way wrong place, I mean WTF were these people talking about and WTF does love have do with it anyways, I am here to learn how to stop using drugs, not get some sort of touchy-feelie new age cure for something that is not part of my life. Yes, open-minded and willing were not two principles that described this addict back in the day. In fact I was quite certain that I loved myself and need not need any trendy psychological help, and believed that was what was being expressed in this readig, HAH, I was already complete and you guys could take your “love and shove it!” As resistant as I was, there certainly did not seem to be much hope for me and as I stuck around and became a member, things changed. I have said it more than once before, I was not a victim of the pink cloud syndrome, nor was I struck clean. On the outside I put on a fairly good approximation of what I thought a recovered addict should look like, but on the inside, I was still planning my next use.

Derek R
12 years clean, dude!
I'm glad you never gave up.

I could go on and on, but the truth is, I was lying to myself worse than I was lying to my peers. I really did want self-esteem. I may not have hated myself, but I certainly had very little love for the man I had become and the way my life looked. When others talk about getting their lives back, I silently wonder why, as my old life was not anything that I look back and wish I was there. In fact, part of this new way of living gig, is a brand new life. In brief, I did not love myself, I finally accepted I was an addict, I worked steps, I stayed clean and I learned how to live, and yet there are times when I wonder if this recovery gig is really for me. I like to pretend I am cold, hard and distant, but that is a front I put on, to protect myself from others. Arrogance was what I use to cover up my lack of social graces and sarcasm and cynicism are the camouflage for less than stellar self-esteem. As I grow in the program, especially through this last step cycle, I can see that all of those traits may protect me from the painful truth that people are as unreliable as I am. People can be just as hurtful to me, as I once was to others and that unless I let go of my old ideas, I probably will be joining the parade of addicts that leave the rooms when they get their lives back, oh yeah, that was just for yesterday!
Back to the topic, all of those traits I use to protect myself are symptoms of not being as well as I want to be. When I look at where I want to go, I see the journey is ongoing and I can esteem myself. In that little ditty about totems, that I heard time and again, it was PROGRAM -> GOD -> SELF, as the order from the top. not being a “GOD” kind of person simplifies things down to a very short list of what I need to prioritize and as I learn to do so, more and more I GET to feel what it means to treat myself well. That is not to say that I do everything perfectly, as I was just told that something I said last night came off as bragging, when I was stating a fact, so the traits are still there, I am still a work in progress and I can accept that just for today, I can be kind to myself and I will bet that as a result, I will be kinder to others. It is a great day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞