Blog entry for:

it really does pass and nothing lasts forever. yes those words sound so trite and empty when i am feeling like scorched and salted earth inside. the problem is no matter how many times i have been through them, they still suck. the silver lining? well there really is none, intense feelings are just there. when i realize that is just the way i am going to feel and not try and change them, i grow. the whole once upon a midnight dreary kind of scenario. it is not always midnight.
since i came to my current sponsor, i have been working on being present for life around me. what it has forced me to do, especially in this last step cycle is to be present for what is happening inside of me. more than once, it has been suggested to me that i “feel” a solution, instead of listen or look for one. i know what i am writing about may seem like “advanced” recovery to some of my peers, but i really do not care. today, i may not be able to name every frigging feeling that i have, but i have learned how to sit still with them and allow them to play out. when i do not obsess about how terrible i am feeling, guess what i feel better. when i just allow things to work out, especially with my feelings, rather than self-will myself to somewhere else, they pass.
i often hear my peers sharing about having the desire to “change the way they feel.” my question to myself is why? i understand that desire and often get consumed by it myself. what i have discovered is that if i do NOT try to change the way i feel, my feelings change themselves. just as everything that i hold on to and force into an outcome, self-willing my feelings usually does not turn out the way i desire it to turn out. removing the value judgements about good and bad feelings certainly helps that process. for me, i identify my so-called “good feelings” as those that are pleasant and the “bad” ones are the unpleasant ones. it is amazing that once i switched out the labels, all my feelings became important to me, when my feelings achieved equality, my need to alter them, diminished and i learned that i could survive the unpleasant feelisng as well as the pleasant ones and stay clean another day.
it is time however, to get rolling down the road. how do i feel today? i am feeling grateful for being clean, confident bi am on the right path and kind of pissed off i could not dream up an excuse to work form home. so it goes in the life of this garden variety addict.

∞ DT ∞