Blog entry for:

my freedom to choose by avoiding the responsibility for the outcome. taking a cue from election headlines, if i do not like the results, of course i have to find some mythical conspiracy to blame. i not only understand this behavior, i lived it for years in active addiction. not choosing and allowing myself to be swept along with the current of life, made me a master of diversion, excuses and not committing to anything if it is always the fault of the nebulous “them,” i could live my life free from looking at the real cause of the situations i found myself in. although i did not have the “liberal media,” or the “political machine” to blame for my ills, my boogie-men were just as invisible and nefarious. so when i failed to advance in my life, i had a a scapegoat and did not need to learn to take any responsibility.
when i entered recovery, or at least got clean and stumbled around for those first eighteen months, the “man,” and that b!tch, were the ones responsible for my pain and misery and even my first quick walk through the steps, barely dented that rock solid foundation of my denial structure. i was paying the price for something i had no power over, was not present for and had a very peripheral interest in. i had a new cast of characters on which to blame my woes, and i did. when i returned from my vacation that was an exercise of self-will and turned into a defining moment of who and what i was, i finally started to destroy that foundation, i finally begin to accept that maybe, on some deep down level, in some teeny tiny way, i just might have a part in causing my own misery and i might have the power to stop doing so.
that crack in the wall of my denial, had led me to where i am today. that was where the two roads diverged in the wood, and that is where i took the path less traveled by, at least less traveled by addicts like myself. that road, a path to active recovery and learning to live a program. at over six thousand days clean, the understanding of what i am, still does not sit well with me from timer to time and i want to blame my new scapegoat, the part of me i call addiction. i want to fall back on the the “after all, i am only an addict,” again and again, and catch myself doing so. then i finally remember that I AM THE addict and unlike the walrus, who may have been Paul, i have a responsibility to make my own choices and accept the consequences, pleasant or unpleasant. that is just how life works in the real world, without the cushion of dozens of sycophants and millions of dollars to protect me from the fallout.
today i do NOT abdicate my responsibility to choose, nor do i seek to blame anyone or anything else for my less successful choices. i get that as a human being, i may not always choose correctly, but to live in the FEAR of my next bad choice, will keep me from living at all. i am grateful to be clean today, and i choose to wrap this up and head on down to work, because they expect me to show up and give them my best and because i CHOOSE to do so, at least just for today!

∞ DT ∞