Blog entry for:

keeping it simple, not just for my friends, anymore!
if i were a literal type, and i certainly can be, i would take the title of this entry to mean that there is a different standard of **how** to do amends, simple and straight forward for my friends and complicated and obtuse for everyone else.😜 what i GOT as i listened this morning, and not to the voices in my head, was that is that the HOW is as important as the WHEN and WHERE or even the DESIRE to do so. fortunately across the course of my recovery i have become fairly adept at making amends, and although that in and of itself is a good thing, the fact that i have had enough practice to BECOME adept at making amends, is a bit telling of who and what i am.
so yes, i am human and i am an addict. i make mistakes, tromp on the toes and feelings of others and generally can live in a storm of self-willed chaos. all of those “facts,” as it were contribute to the fact that i have made many, many amends, across the course of my recovery and will have many more yet to come. the HOPE is, that as i work a program of active recovery, the NEED to make so many amends will begin to diminish, and it is true, i need to make fewer and fewer when i get to my NINTH STEP process, and even when i have to apply the corrective part of STEP TEN, very little of admitting i was wrong, rise to the level of a formal amends.
speaking of which: at the meeting last night i shared how much i dislike the SIXTH STEP and i forgot the HOPE part. even though i do NOT like STEP SIX, i welcome the change that the process brings and i embrace that STEP like no other,m because i know that it is only through becoming entirely ready that i will want the personality change that is part of the 12 STEP process. yes, STEP SIX is the least favorite of the steps, but for someone like me, it is a necessary part of what i NEED to do to continue my growth into the man i have always wanted to be.
that was not an amends, just an admission of doing wrong, just to be clear.
back to our regularly scheduled mind dump.
for as long as i can remember, even before i used for the very first time, i was able to find a way to shift the responsibility of my actions off myself. manipulation and obfuscation were the tools i used, coupled with the ability to rationalize and justify, i was a perfect storm to wreak havoc in my life and the lives of others: peers, acquaintances, family members, and most of all friends. the more i was trusted and the closer i was, the greater the damage i created as i moved into the self-willed world of active addiction. i may not have been a very good bald-faced liar, but i could certainly do my best to hide what i did in a cloud of smoke, all the time using substances to assuage my ever diminishing capacity to do the next right thing. honesty, open-mindedness and willingness were not on the tip of my tongue, when i finally arrived at the door to the rooms, and it would still be more than another minute before they became principles i could live by. when it came time to make amends, that very first time, i was unwilling, because i actually believed the harm i did to others was cancelled out by the harm they did to me, and even if that was not reality, i could root around enough, to make it so, at least in my own head. those very few that i was willing to make, were hidden in a complex maze of excuses and words, and in the end, my very first sponse, had to ask me what the damage was and what i was going to do to repair that damage. i had to simplify and get down to the essential facts, and leave the wordplay aside. honestly, when i first wrote those amends, i was not looking for forgiveness, i was seeking apologies for imagined harm. and so it goes…
i now know how to make a proper amends. i now know how to own the damage i do to others and the world around me. most of all, i have the DESIRE to live in such a manner where i do NOT cause damage to anyone as i traipse through my daily affairs. i need not lie to myself about what i am doing, because most of the time i am not doing that crap anymore. it is a good day to be clean, and yes, if i owe an amends i will not be waiting until the next time i trip across STEP NINE, to do so, i will be present in the here and now, and take care of my bidness in the real world, just for today.

∞ DT ∞