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when i think about topics that explicitly deal with love, i seem to shut down, truthfully, for the longest time, this reading was one of the corniest ones in my opinion and i never could get anything out of it. today, as i sit at the end of my 12th step, on a set of steps that dealt explicitly with my capacity to love, i see this reading a bit differently and need not make bad jokes or analogies to military assault vehicles or popular music.
my problem, as i saw it at the beginning of this step cycle, was the belief i only had a limited capacity to love and i believed that i was almost full. my sponsor in his wisdom heard what i said and suggested a different theme for this set of steps, which was to uncover my place in my fellowship and the world around me. one of the side-effects of this journey is that now, i see that my original premise was flawed and that the direction we took through this set of steps, exposed that belief for what it was, pure and simple garbage.
i see now that even though i have some clean time and some step cycles behind me, the remnants of my great wall of denial are still in place and from within, i want to resurrect the barrier of denial that kept me at arms length from the fellowship for those first eighteen months. i still long to be “different” from my peers, so i can find the necessary rationalization to “use just once!”
as i examine my belief system and the changes wrought by this set of steps, i see that each time i moved forward i was looking for another wedge to place myself somewhere, anywhere else than smack dab in the middle of a fellowship where staying clean was the first requirement, to find a new way of living. the paradigm shift in my spirituality was the most obvious symptom., but in the long run, it has brought me back to the fellowship, with a new found fervor and yes a new message of HOPE. that message can be summed up by saying that i am not now broken, nor was i ever broken, i was just incapable of seeing my potential nor the potential of the world around me, including those who inhabit that world. the fantasy i constructed about who i was, did not evaporate the day i got clean and just as the wall of denial still has parts left, so does my fantasy land look of who and what i am. it is no wonder that after fifteen years of trying to find an escape from who i was, and twenty-five years of using substances top actually escape realizing who i was and constructing the perfect self-image of a man that never existed, that i would still be working through these issues today. forty years of inertia is a hard force to overcome ab[n d as my fantasy world loses it grip on me, the mass of that moving object becomes less and it is easier to change course.
no i am not too broken to receive and give love. my capacity is like that of my fellows human beings, infinite. getting over the FEAR of the consequences when i exchange LOVE, is my task these days. COURAGE to walk through the FEAR of pain, quite a label for my resistance to this change and my desire to be something different than a garden variety addict. in the long run, i am a better person because of the steps and my ability to allow them to make the changes of personality required to keep me clean today. on that note, i think i will go join my co-workers at the place of our employment and see what i can accomplish today.

∞ DT ∞