Blog entry for:

relieve the suffering of those in pain, even after 6939 days (19 years) clean, i often find myself at a loss for words when i am trying to comfort those in my life, who need a bit of empathy, love and my time, after life events that are traumatic.
so yes i have made another trip around the sun without having to activate the addict that is me. i did not use in the past year and it has certainly been quite the journey, as much as i would like to say it was a breeze, the fact is, it was not. more on that later, firsat a shout out to the two menm in the local fellowship who are (un)fortunate to share my clean date on the calendar.

Chris M
Big shout-out and congrats
SEVEN (7) years clean.
The statute of limitations has expired and you are still free.
Way to go my friend.

Leonard H
Congrats on a decade of clean-time
10 years of doing it 'Just for Today'
is quite a feat. keep comin' back.

since i have relived this day over and over again, i need not write today of how this came to be. suffice it to say, that 19 years ago i viewed this as the absolutely worst day of my life and i was certain that my life was over. i was correct in one sense, the life i had been living was over and i was embarking on a journey into a life beyond my wildest dreams.
what was, is no more, and what was not, has become reality in my life. no amount of wishing, scheming or manipulating could have brought me to this place and even though the reading is about what i can do for others, perhaps it is more apropos to write about what others do for me. way back in those dark days of my brutally enforced abstinence, when i was still shucking and jiving to keep the “get high” gravy train rolling, when i was betrayed by my body and ended up finally getting abstinent, i was certain that the fellowship and the program had nothing to offer me, save a resting place to keep me from going nutz, during my vacation from my life as a using addict. more than once in those early days of this journey, did i assure myself that this too shall pass, and i would be high before i knew it. things did not turn out that way, but it certainly was not from lack of effort on my part. amazingly, at least for me, pretending to want to be in recovery, working steps on a surface level and hanging out with all those “superstitious freaks,” led to me becoming one of them. i am no longer on the outside looking in with derision and contempt, which in and of itself was quite journey as well. today i may not be everything to versioned, but i am becoming a person that can be counted on and to be there for those who take the time to let me in their lives. the relationships i put the least work in to, at least consciously, are turning out to be my deepest and most endearing ones. this whole paradigm of feeling my way to the next right thing, seems to be working out, just like the many practices i half-assed my way through in those first eighteen months of pretending to be one of the flock.
today, well today, i will be present for all that happens to go on. i will accept what others want to give me, and be gracious in my word and deed. for today is old hat and yet it feels so brand new that i cannot believe that someone like me, duplicitous, thieving, manipulative and self-entitled, could ever let go of what was and become what could never be, someone who is learning to be WHOLE, GENUINE and SELF-ASSURED.

∞ DT ∞