Blog entry for:

to face whatever feelings may come up. feelings -> shmeelings, what is all this big fuss about feelings and labeling them as good, bad or indifferent. the way i hear some of my peers go on and on about freaking feelings, one would think that they were infected by some alien presence, that is out to get them.i have come to believe that feelings are just that feelings and need not be categorized, labeled and tucked into some sort of neatish box to get them out of my way. more and more, i am also coming to believe that feelings are transitory, and the harder i try to avoid them or alter them the longer and more perversely i experience them,.
before i get down on my peers and act all sorts of SUPREME here, i get what they are trying to do, i did the exact same thing. for me active addiction and even early recovery, i wanted immediate gratification and relief from the feelings i was not accustomed to feeling. there certainly is a part of me that craves immediate relief from anything i judge to be unpleasant, and feelings, at least the unpleasant ones, i classified as “bad ones.” sure using took care of those for me, as a very welcomed side-effect and acting out on addiction buffered them when i entered recovery. quite honestly it was not until this set of steps when i actually began to see feelings as just that, but as i stayed clean, that realization was coming closer and closer to reality, before it became part of my belief system.
for the perspective of a few days clean and at the end of another step cycle, i see that ALL feelings are necessary and desirable, and that i NEED to see them as gifts, rather than the curse i often thought they were. i am not one of those who believes that my FAITH is tested or even need to be proven, so finding the courage to just feel, is not all that hard for me to do. at least not anymore. reading such as this one, only strengthen my resolve to decouple what i think is pleasant or unpleasant from “good” or “bad.”
i have often spoken lately as having a FAITH based program, FAITH that the recovery path i do my best to live, will provide me with the desire to stay clean and trod the path into becoming the sort of human i have always wanted to be. stoicism, was not something that came naturally to me, even though in active addiction i seemed to be unfeeling and constant in many regards. the day wears on, and i need to get on with the next right thing. i may be exhausted as i am no longer well-equipped to handle all-nighters, but there is light at the end of the tunnel and i am fairly certain it is not a train.

∞ DT ∞