Blog entry for:

clawing at something sorely needed, that something, as it turned out, was a new manner of living. who would have ever thought that? not me for certain, and yet, here i am smack dab in living in this new manner, writing about the trial and tribulations of living a life of recovery and wondering, what the fVck took me so long to wake up and smell the figurative coffee. i have argued fro years that desperation was the one gift i NEVER received, i merely wanted the means out of the legal jam i had found myself entrapped in. even at the end of my attempt to control my recovery and disqualify myself from this new way of living, i voraciously argued that i was not then, nor had i ever been desperate. ironic as it seems today, the ONLY reason i got a sponsor and made became a single fellowship denizen, was because i felt desperate in that room , with a friend who uses, using the drugs i bought and desiring with my entire being to do just one, and fearing for my freedom if i allowed a single molecule to defile the temple of my body. as ridiculous as it sounds today, it was that event, that kicked off my ongoing recovery process and remembering how it felt is only possible today, because of the process of recovery.
one might wonder why someone like me, would stay in recovery once my legal difficulties had been resolved, after all, one might argue, was i ever an addict at all? from this perspective, i see that question as more than a bit ridiculous. looking at who i was back in those days, i see it as a very germane question. the problem was for quite some time, i had learned to bury all of my feelings and totally close myself off emotionally. so complete was that process, that i did not feel and when i did feel, i had no idea what it was that i might be feeling. i was a true rock, as practice had made perfect and even after i stopped using and was clean, i still had a repertoire of behaviors that fed my addiction, so once again, even though my uncontrollable use of drugs had been suspended, i still had the ways and means to get through a day, without a single feeling. oh i learned quite quickly how to emulate and feign emotions, and i did actually feel grief at the passing of both my grandmothers in that very first year clean, but on the whole, i was a simulacrum of an emotional being and i truly believed feelings were for the weak and feeble, and i certainly was neither.
today, i know that there was desperation and there was a desire to stay clean. today, as i have recovered the full range of human emotions, it startles me to find others who are in a similar state of being -- closed off emotionally from themselves. the notion i have been struggling with over the past few days, is how do i help another find a path to allowing themselves to feel, instead of acting out at the first sign of a feeling coming on. how do i explain that it is not the consequences, good or bad, that is the problem, it is the act itself. i have yet to come to a place where i know what to do, except share my experience, strength and hope and allow them the freedom to spin down into a world of relapse, pain and misery, all because they refuse to feel an emotion. just as it was for me, they too must reach a place of desperation and i just need to be there to give them a hand up from that dark and ascary state of being.
it is a good day to be clean and a better day to move forward and see how i can live a better life today, not desperate and certainly willing to allow myself the luxury of feeling whatever emotion comes my way, just for today.

∞ DT ∞