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i was brave simply because i had never experienced fear. well better put, i never believed i felt fear, as there was a wall of denial between myself and reality. sure drugs helped, getting high allowed me to keep the fantasy that i was fearless alive by letting me play a game of spiritual ‘whataboutism.’ the current resident of Casa Blanca plays this well, by answering direct criticism with a criticism of the party that is addressing him. the way i played it, especially in times where my fantasy world seemed to be collapsing in and was in danger of unleashing reality upon me. someone came at me for being untrustworthy or because they were “missing” an item and i would fire back at them with the line:“what about that time you…” distracting myself by deflecting criticism was just part of my avoidance repertoire i played. there certainly was straight up denial, blaming the victim and being the victim of someone else's bad behavior. in the long run, i was truly fearless, because i had lost the ability to face my fear, through chemical, spiritual; and mental means. i may have been walking this planet, but i certainly was not living on it.
getting clean was far from a courageous act for me and staying clean has become more than just a lifestyle. i got clean to avoid the consequences of my action and as i have said before, my intention was never to stay clean for more than 1000 days or so. fVck the justice system, i was going to be barely compliant and not give them any excuse to send me away. i was secretly and severely recalcitrant and that attitude carried over into the sham recovery life i was fronting. those judgemental people were easy to fool and i was getting good at gaming the system, or so i thought. &#lt;ominous chords&#gt; coming to find myself with no friends, no dope and certainly no hope, i finally allowed one person into my life for real, my second sponsor, and i started walking towards a path of recovery. i never threatened to kill myself, or even let on what i really thought, even if i was at the end of my rope and thought this recovery way of life was straight up bullsh!t. when i finally faced my fear of living life without getting high, for the very first time, i realized that i had more going on than i was ready to admit, i was screwed in so many ways and there was no way out, either i had to face recovery or just go back to using, i had pared my choices down to two. as one can see, the path i chose on that spiritually dark and dank day in May 1999, has led me to here.
fear is just one of the feelings i have had to learn to deal with, since i got clean and became a member. the biggest shift in this set of steps is the discovery that fear, just like any other feeling, does not need to be “dealt with,” it simply requires acknowledgment and possible action. i do not need to “change” what i am feeling, just feel it and act accordingly. i no longer have to react to or alter what i am feeling, i can merely be okay feeling FEAR, i can see if it is rational or irrational, and if i need to face it by walking through it, or dismiss it as smoke and mirrors. in all honesty most of what drives me, a whole lot of time, is my FEAR that i am not going to get what i am entitled to and that i NEED to scrape out every iota of what i deserve. yeah sounds kind of shallow when i look at it that way, but as i am coming to find out, i learned to be shallow and opaque, to protect me from the outside world. recovery, especially lately is teaching me how to plumb the depths of who i am and be willing to continue on the path i chose all those days ago, when my eminence front of recovery, finally stared to crumble.

∞ DT ∞