Blog entry for:

chain reaction of any sort, is certainly something fearful, even one of happiness and joy. WTF, i hear from the rafters, do you mean by that. the answer is that in my experience, i have not done well with any sort of feelings that extend out beyond the pale of my normal spectrum. one of my favorite side-effects of daily using was that i COULD and DID regulate the intensity of what i felt. one could say that even back then, i was afraid of being overwhelmed by my feelings and certainly, being a brittle and fragile emotional being, that was certainly the case. i was loathe to show that, and used against my feelings at times of sever stress, and in the long run, learned how to manage them fairly well.
imagine my surprise when i woke up clean to my first “overwhelming chain reaction” of feelings when my Gringa died in my first two months of abstinence. the only thing that kept me clean in those dim and dark days, was an willful and obstinate effort to keep my a$$ out of prison and it worked. what i also learned, was that a feeling, or an “overwhelming chain reaction, ” of feelings, was not fatal. i survived and even though i lust my other Grandmother at seven months clean, i started to 'get' that i could stay clean NO MATTER WHAT, so when i finally got around to working the steps for real. my FEAR of the FOURTH STEP was more centered on what i would like when all was revealed and not on the pain i perceived may be coming down the pike.
all of that is oh so nice, but what about life in the here and now? what about it?
i have found a certain stability to my emotional life, as a result of working the steps. STEPS TEN and ELEVEN seem to even out the ride and my last FOURTH STEP uncovered a set of feelings that i considered ancient history. the fact that after forty years, those feelings could still affect me with such vengeance is disconcerting and goes to the heart of this reading. yes, i felt the pain of that seventeen year old, that was thrust into a very strange and foreign place. i re-experienced the despair, loneliness and yes angst of that time in my life and weird as it sounds, it was good for me top feel all of that and put it into its proper place,m namely the past. i was far from destroyed by revealing that to my sponsor and when i look at it today, that is one of the seminal moments in this set of steps, i have finally released the pain that i have been carrying and today i get to be myself, instead of an awkward seventeen tear old boy, trying to fit in and abide by a set of rules that seemed to be written in Middle English, recognizable but barely intelligible.
anyhow i have miles to get under my belt today, so i will end with this. today, as scary as it sounds, even an overwhelming chain-reaction of feelings will not kill me and i can face them as they come.

∞ DT ∞