Blog entry for:

the chance to learn how to survive my emotions. some days, it sucks to be me. i have all sorts of **inconvenient** feelings, messing with and **making** me behave in a manner unlike what i want to portray. i may not be a spiritual guru, all balanced, calm, serene and with just the right tidbit of advice to offer at the exact right time, seemingly unfazed by the storms of living life on its own terms, but i certainly want to LOOK like one! it is more than a little ironic that i saw my emotions and feelings “MAKE” me behave badly, as one of the lessons i learned while using was to NEVER, ever, take the blame for anything and ALWAYS find a scapegoat. there certainly is a whole lot of validation for this blame-shifting among my peers, and sometimes i wonder exactly what sort of message i am sending when i say that “i wanted to change the way i felt, so i went up the hill to gamble.” before i go there, first a bit of a call-out:

Scott M
Six (6), count 'em, years clean.
Congrats, my friend.

doing something, anything but using, change my feelings, is one way to survive my feelings, but in my opinion, it is far from the healthiest choice i can make. what my peers believe, is okay for them. what i believe may not mirror their outlook in this matter, and this is, after all, all about me.
when i am having any sort of emotion, there is something going on inside of me that needs to be addressed. sure feelings and emotions can be situational and those are usually transient and pass quickly. the feelings i am writing about today, are those that never seem to end. the days of darkness, of worry, of concern, of anger, or of just feeling “meh.” the transient ones? i have learned a strategy for dealing with those, namely just feel them and be certain that this too shall pass. those long-term, seemingly forever ones? well those are a bit more problematic, but my solution for “surviving” is similar to the transient ones.
first and foremost, my credo has become, that recovery for me, is more than just surviving anything. yes, i survived active addiction, early recovery and a hundred and one little hurdles to get where i am today. if that was all this was about,m i would have left the fellowship and recovery a long, long time ago. there has to be a reward, beyond just another day clean, and i have certainly found one. -- the ability to walk through life, comfortable in who i am and having a “vision” of where i may be going. i GET to feel today and that gift, as much as i often wonder what is in the horse the Greeks have rolled up to my doorway, i know that gift allows me to rejoin the human race. so the question than becomes, if i believe feelings and emotions are a gift, what the fVck do i do with them. the answer is not a damn thing. what helps me to allow myself to just be present and feel, is first to remove the value judgement of “good” or “bad” from them. what i have to do is transform those judgements intro something far more personal such as good feelings are those i like and bad feelings are those i do not. yes i like being happy and i do not like being sad. it really is that simple. the second part to accepting gratefully the gift of emotions, is to realize that ALL feeling are transitory and will pass, all i have to do is let them. one thing though, chronic clinical depression is a mental illness, over-diagnosed i am quite sure, but very real and needs outside help. whether that is medication or therapy does not matter, it is not up to me to play psychologist and tell someone that sort of feeling will just pass, it will not.
back to me, as i am not afflicted with any sort of serious mental illness, i just have to allow myself to feel, see if there is anything in my life, my behaviors or thoughts that is driving that feeling and change what i can. most of the time i discover that i do have a part in that feelings. when i am dissatisfied with my life and am walking around angry all the time, it is usually due to my unmet expectations. if my goals and dreams are unrealistic i am setting myself up for rage and resentment. daily inventory and meditation allow me to examine what may be behind what it is i am feeling and move into a bit of acceptance with my current situation and look to whether or not i am living the best life i can be.
and so it goes. surviving my feelings means accepting my feelings and living through them, one day at a time. i may not like the way i feel, but it does not eman i need to do something to change that feeling in the here and now, after all, i have yet to die from an emotion.

∞ DT ∞