Blog entry for:

as the means to stop cultivating self-pity. misery in recovery is optional. that does not mean that pain and living life on its own terms is not fraught with peril, plenty can go **wrong** on any given day, regardless of how well i live a program of recovery. some of it, is just life's terms kind of shite, stuff i have no power over and just have to accept. some of it is due to the actions of others, again something i am powerless over and although i have to accept it, i can make the changes in my life to diminish the chance that they will not once again, ride roughshod all over me. finally, there is the stuff i do that makes my life miserable, even in active recovery. many of my peers might say that my cynicism is “negative” energy and the root of all my evil and once upon a time i would have agreed with them. these days not so much, as i have come to accept that maybe, just maybe, a touch of cynicism is what this addict NEEDS to be himself and to avoid living in the house of pain and misery built by my own self-pity. the last trip through STEPS SIX and SEVEN, showed my how warped my cynical self could be and had become, but is also providing me the means to “right size” it, probably for the first time in my life.
the house i have built out of self-pity is not the refuge i once thought it was. as i was constructing this shelter for the storms of life and hide from taking responsibility, i was creating an expectation for myself, that i would never, ever have to face life on its own terms. when retreating into my safe place was insufficient, well just a little dab of dis or dat, would do me, and ease my burden. moving into a life of mere abstinence only made matters worse, as the shelter i sought in my house of pain and misery was more and more elusive and what really went on in there, became more and more evident ⇛ i was killing myself bit by bit with thew drops of poison called isolation. as hard as i tried to prove i was NOT an addict and how different i was from those who were part of the fellowship, the more dire my situation became, until finally i was desperate enough to cease fighting the facts of my life ⇛ i was an addict and if i ever wanted to join the rest of the human race, i needed to do something different. and <BOOM> here i am‼
all of that is quite nice, from time to time, revisiting my past and reinterpreting the events from way back when is a necessary, because i walk through the process of the steps, what i think i know, requires a bit of tweaking and revision, living in self-misery and playing the blame game are two elements of my past that certainly need to be looked at, in the new reality created by the process of the steps.i see what was once a survival skill, namely the cynical outlook that colored my world is not needed anymore. i do not have to walk through my life waiting for the “other shoe” to drop. a healthy dose of lowered expectations is fine, looking for the pile shite at the end of every rainbow is not.
i may not be responsible for my addiction but i am certainly responsible for my recover and just for today, it does not suck to be me.

∞ DT ∞