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and who i am today, is there really any difference? an interesting question, and one that bares a bit of exploration this morning. as i pound this ditty out, i am listening to Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, through noise-cancelling headphones. back in the day, this was one of my favorite activities, as their parts of the music that can only be heard with headphones on. the only difference is that instead of imbibing in some chemical escape form the so-called “real” world, i am writing about it. yes back in the day, by the ending notes of TIME, i would have been thoroughly baked, instead i am just getting wound up. there was a time in my recovery, where the irony of my activities this morning would have been totally missed by me, does that mean that irony was “undiscovered?” what is exactly is discovery anyhow?
my ancestors claim they discovered the continent of North America, but what about those who actually inhabited the lands before they got brave enough to venture out across the ocean? in my opinion, it is a bit difficult to “discover” something that is already well-known to hundreds of thousands of others. the hubris of claiming these so-called “new” lands, still bothers me today. all of that little bit screed applies to myself and my journey in recovery.
it si true, and i admit it without any reservations, that active addiction buried much of who i am under a pile of self-deprecating bullshit and an active recovery process has removed much of what was piled on, during my “lost” decades. just as the dark ages were not really dark, so my life in active addiction did not fashion me into something different than i ever was. no active addiction allowed me to live out parts of myself that are far from being healthy or hale. active addiction took those naughty bit and brought them to the forefront of my behavior and using relieved me of any conscience. with that in mind, i can state that an active program of recovery has brought those bits back into a more proper balance, as i uncovered those parts of me, that the world may classify as “positive.” traits. the process of rediscovery of who i really am, is ongoing and facing that which i fear the most is part of the process. i can continue to pretend that i am “okay” just the way i am and continue to stall on my step work, or i can move forward on that voyage of uncovery. i am not really treading on terra incognito, as i have seen all there is to see about myself in these sixty-ish years of walking on two legs. what i am doing is getting a clearer idea of how it all fits together, as this is more like working a jigsaw puzzle with no clues about what the finished product will look like, so i guess there is a bit of discovery yet to happen.
what i know is this: how i once acted and felt, is far from how i do so today. my desire to avoid all that is unpleasant and embrace only what makes me feel good, has been brought into check and what i am really comparing is not the man who writes this today, to the man who walked into the rooms. the comparison is not really about who i was versus who i am, but how i live and once i put it into those terms, the whole discovery notion flies out the window and i move into a different space about who this stuff works.
i have been here all the time, just as the indigenous peoples were. there have been a few who actually saw me for what i was, just as the Western Europeans were not the first to sail the ocean blue. i am grateful for the addiction of the knowledge the recovery process is bringing me and how each piece i pull out of the puzzle box, is bringing a little bit closer to seeing the person i actually am, just for today.

∞ DT ∞