Blog entry for:

though nothing changes.
For me, this topic is so ironic this morning, that it hardly need to be mentioned. I will nevertheless say, that I am far from home, far from the rut of my normal life BUT I still am practicing my recovery routine. I still pray, I still sit, I still do an inventory, and for the first time while in Mexico, I have been writing these little numbers, to keep myself, in touch with myself. Across the course of the next 14 and a half hours, I will be heading home and back to my more normal routine, the “rut” of my everyday life, and I am not in the least bit d=sad, angry or remorseful. I went away with the woman I loved, we enjoyed ourselves in the surf and sun and I GET to come back to my life at home, as boring and routine as it may seem to be. This morning I am grateful for the life I have and after a week in a Mexican tropical destination, I am certainly ready to pick up that life and move forward.
Back to the topic at hand, after that brief and sincere expression of my feelings. Quite truthfully I have always been a creature of habit, I liked my routine back in active addiction and “allowed” the chaos of uncertainty to creep in at very controlled times, and in a very controlled manner, or at least that is what I once believed. Active addiction had actually stripped me of any ambition, any desire to make new friends, go new places, or better myself. The rut I had damned myself to, was a comfortable one, and the only bit of chaos was how I was going to stretch my resources this week to keep myself high and fed, and high always came first. I had a very specific order to my life, wake-up, get high, shower and shave, take the bus to work, come home get high and watch TV by myself in my rented room. At least that was how it ended up for me. In blazing gun battles. No intrigue of the dealing world, just a petty and lonely addict,slowly dying be degrees, day after day. You know, very slow dissolve into nothingness. My life had little meaning and I was content, or at least satisfied with what I had. Certainly nothing to inspire any sort of miniseries or movie, or even a boring e-book, I was simply existing.
I could go through all the changes that brought me here to where I am today, writing my blog, on a beach in Mexico on my seventh day in the sun, with the woman I share my life with these days. That story, while hardly boring, is one I have dripped out bit by bit across the years, in these little writings. The truth is, I needed all those years of the daily grind to learn how to be a part of my life today. Yesterday was a good day, one of a chain of good days, that stretches back some time. Sure I forgot to put sunscreen on my face, and as a result, my face is fried. Sure our ride to parasailing was late, but he did show up and I did go up. It is true I have not had flan the whole time I have been here, but I had the largest serving of creme brûlée I have ever seen last night. Each day we have got up, had breakfast, walked on the beach, stay by the pool, and just relaxed and yet that rut did not once feel like it was not enough for me. A similar feeling runs through me when I consider my program of recovery. Up until about twenty months ago, I had the men I sponsored, I worked my steps and there were not a whole lot of big events in my life. I was not too concerned about men not asking me to sponsor them, because, for me, the number of men I sponsor, is not a sign of my “material” status of my recovery and I am of the notion, that I will always sponsor exactly the correct number of men. I am, however digressing, my point was, that I was in a rut of sorts in my recovery. Not that I had thought “DAMN I NEED TO DO SOMETHING,” but certainly a routine that was fast turning into a rut. As I progressed through this step journey and backed les socially backward, all of a sudden, more people entered my life and the rut that was, was destroyed and all sorts of new and different changes have manifest in my recovery. On the surface, the routine is pretty much the same. I have my morning recovery ablutions, as it were, I go to work, I go to the same meetings and I end my day the way I have done for some years. Nothing is in dire need of being fixed or altered, nor does it feel boring or redundant. I happen to like the way my life is today, and while I am quite certain that change may be coming, I need not live in fear of that day, that hour or even that minute. Today I can go eat breakfast, take a walk on the beach, celebrate that I GOT TO GO para-sailing, and start our journey home, to return to the “rut” of my normal, everyday life, for which I am entirely grateful for, just for today.

∞ DT ∞