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what does one say to the parents of a child who was brutally murdered, when the perpetrator of that heinous crime is sentenced to life plus six years? for me, that is not a rhetorical question, but one that i have had to deal with over the past year, with all its attendant awkwardness.i was going to project what i thought my feelings were, but decided against that, after all, that was what i explicitly chided a sponsee to stop doing, less than seventy-two hours ago. what do i feel? well the disbelief that the original event even happened has been replaced with a sense of perhaps there is a tiny bit of justice in the world after all.
i was going to go down a path of how powerless i am, and after writing a bit, i realized all of a sudden i was beginning to sound as if i was the victim here. so truly moving along, as i stay clean and grow in my recovery, i can allow others the freedom they need to grow as well. over the course of the past seventy-two hours, i have seen how i can and often do, cast motives on the behavior of others, to help further the story i tell myself about how good enough and well-liked i could be, if only…
it is that narrative, polished and refined over the course of my active addiction, that was certainly the mortar that bound the bricks of my wall of isolation together.
“i am good enough dammit, if they were not so jealous, envious, idiotic or closed-minded, they would see that as evident!”
ironically, what i have discovered is that is not all a lie, which makes it even more insidious. it seems that as i tell myself a story or two, there is always just enough truth in it, to get me to suspend my critical thinking skills. i was good enough for human companionship, the truth was and still is, that i am afraid of what the costs of intimate interactions with the real world will cost me. as if, being a part of the lives of those around me, is some gigantic cash register, ringing up transactions left and right. when i suspend my disbelief, i fall victim to my own baffling and cunning version of the interpreting the world around me. in that mode, everything must be explainable if only i can put it into a rational and logical framework. what i have discovered is that my human heart does not fit into anything close, and if that is the case, it is more than likely, that the hearts of the rest of the human race do not fit either. so my story is all of a sudden at odds with reality and a sense of cognitive dissonance arises. back in the day, well a quick little bit and a dab of that and BOOM, all better now. since starting this set of steps, what happens is that i begin to see my story for the lie it is and decide to abandon it, just for today.
it is what iyt is. today i can offer support, even though i do not understand how to. today i can see my lies for what they are, no matter how comforting. and today, just for today, i can continue the demolition of the wall of isolation that trapped me for so long, in my narrow little world, one story at a time. it is a good day to ]move from fiction to non-fiction.

∞ DT ∞