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a program of magic, it is however a program that makes seemingly magical changes. back in those very early days of my exposure to the recovery program, in which i am now firmly entrenched, i wanted what i saw others had. my desire was for the material things and the the “positive” changes i saw in their lives and i believed that if i emulated their behavior, i could get everything i wanted. i was not far off the mark, in this case of mistaken identity, but behaving as they did, did very little to change who i was. that awful cliché about loaded horse thief had come true, with force. sure i was clean, but i was still the selfish, unaware, self-entitled dishonest horse thief that walked into the rooms. nothing of any consequence had changed and was not going to change, as i did not see the need for it, after all i was clean and wasn't that enough? the struggles i faced for the next eighteen months were the result of me wishing and believing that DESIRE was enough, and it was not the desire to stay clean, it was the desire to have a better life, without changing anything. when i realized that doing what i always did, even when i was trying my best to behave like those members who had some clean time, was getting me nowhere spiritually, i had to make a change. passing as a person in recovery was no longer sufficient for me to meet my goal of getting off of paper.
honestly, it certainly was not like BOOM, all of a sudden i became a spiritual paragon of recovery, but i finally became willing to do what it takes to make the transformation in my life get kick-started. before i wander to far astray, i have to say, i have not dome any of this stuff perfectly, nor has there been any sort of linear progression. what has happened that each time i stopped fighting one or more of the notions that i had about being different for one reason or another and accepted that even i had to do the work, if i wanted the results i saw, i got a bit closer to the the person i have always wanted to be. i am far from cured as evidenced by my behavior last night, but i do know what my next step may be: to get moving on step work again. letting someone else dictate my enjoyment of an experience and then sniping at them through veiled insults, because i lacked the determination to address the problem in the here and now, is a symptom of that “magic” working in reverse. this prince is becoming a frog again and he does not like it. wishing for someone to cease a behavior, very rarely works. being passive-aggressive instead of coming right and saying what i am thinking, works even less. i know this and yet i fall back into that pattern without a care in the world. what came out in my TENTH STEP last night was anger, and regret for not doing something. certainly a return to a very familiar pattern of behavior, martyrdom by allowing myself to be victimized, and this morning that is bothering the living shite out of me.
the action i will take? call my sponse and get some time set aside to begin a new set of steps. own my part in not being willing to address my needs and move forward. more than anything else, take the experience and be okay with altering what i do in the future to prevent myself from playing the victim again. i suffer enough from day to day, mostly by my own hand, that i do not need to pile anything else upon the pile burdens i carry these days.

∞ DT ∞