Blog entry for:

help me in my recovery. sometimes, for most of my recovery process, i have been pretty good about hiding how much i may be suffering. i have not relapsed, as that is not part of my story i have nothing to offer down that particular thread. i have been that “someone,” sometimes for years on end, that has supported one of my peers through their frequent relapses and returns to the program, but that role has changed over the course of time, as well. i have also visited that side of the coin, more than once on this particular day as well, so after a quick aside i think i will come back to what i heard this morning.

Helen D (P)
Thirteen years clean!
Congrats on doing it through some very tough times.
Miss you and hope you have found a new recovery community in FLA.

i have written before about what i tried not to be in the early days after my first exposure to a 12 Step program and until my night of desperation. the lesson i learned across the course of those couple of years was, that i had to be better at keeping down and denying the feelings within, because no one really did believe in me. once i finally became a member what i believed nearly got me killed, well loaded anyhow. it was hard to admit that despite appearances, i was in the throes of a major crisis that felt like it could be resolved with a quick application of a substance or two, for just a few days. that Saturday night, behind the YWCA in Boulder, when i actually asked someone to sponsor me, instead of trying to manipulate them into asking me, i realized what i was really feeling, and it was not serenity, joy or arrogance, it was flat-out fear of not knowing how the fVck i was going to stay clean, in that next twenty-four hour slice of time. of course i was far from ready to let anyone actually see that, so i asked was accepted and began a journey that i am still on today.
what is it i am feeling these days? a slow boil under the surface, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. i thought i had started to accept that i am where i am, move on and be okay with my current situation, but nothing seems to be happening soon enough, with great enough clarity or in any way living up to my expectations. everyone, outside of the fellowship, can piss me off with just an errant comment, or a poorly timed joke, especially my coworkers and those who are performing a service for me, and it all comes to that slow boil, that can erupt at a seconds notice, and it is really starting to suck. so do i give Carlos a call and ask for some time? no way, i have been clean long enough i SHOULD be able to muddle my way through this.
do i vent to my closed-mouth friends about what i am feeling? are you kidding, of course not, what would they think of me?
do i share about this in a meeting? you got to be crazy, there is enough insanity being shared there that i need to “correct” that i cannot possibly let them know i have an “issue” or two, that i am the still suffering addict, who needs to hear something more than a bumper sticker slogans or a string of clichés. HELL NO, after all i am supposed to be better than that.
so i sit and simmer and as a result, i have more than a few “wrongs” to promptly own and correct. which only piles on to feelings of being “less than,” and make me walk through life with even more arrogance, aloofness and judmentalness. not a pretty combination for this addict, or any if i think about it.
my solution? let myself feel the anger at being sold and getting less than i bargained for, and let it the fVck go. let someone know that i am in their corner, and maybe a quick txt to my sponse asking for some of his time. after all i am worth asking for a hand out of the swamp i am currently mired within.

∞ DT ∞