Blog entry for:

to feel dirty about my life or my lifestyle, as i am living clean and doing my best to live by the principles i have adopted since i finally became a member. as i pound this out, i am silently whining about how freaking hungry i am, and how much i would enjoy a cup of coffee. i want to scream that i am such a victim, but i know i volunteered for this, as i am having my first physical since seven or eight years. it is quite true, that even though i live a program of recovery, i have neglected taking care of myself, especially once i rejoined the working world and started working for corporate America, as it were. the fact of the matter is, of all the amends i had to make, the one to myself, financially and physically have been the ones i have been avoiding the longest. there is quite a HUGE cognitive dissonance between how i seem treat others in my life and how i treat myself. living clean, no matter how long i seem to accomplish this task, does not seem to change the fact that i hold my body in such low esteem and treat it accordingly. it is getting better and having a morning without breakfast or coffee is not the worst thing i ever did to myself, in fact once upon a time breakfast was a Mountain Dew and a cigarette as i was rushing to get to wherever i had to get to. ah, but i digress into far too much self-pity and nostalgia.
back to the topic, i have not always lived my life in recovery in any semblance of “clean,” save maybe abstinent for the use of drugs. more than once i heard that was “good enough. i took that as license to do wherever i wanted to do, as long as i did not use and although i never killed, maimed, or cheated anyone out their life savings, i was not a very good person, and i kept coming back and coming back clean. i need not detail my tale of woe and misery, but i certainly had more than one amends to make, once my head popped out of my a$$ and i realized that staying clean may be a successful day, but living a “shady” lifestyle was not going to make me any better. it is probably why i am so averse to hearing someone say “i only beat my wife once today” as if progress towards the goal of never beating your wife is “good enough.” i have settled for good enough for far too long and just for today, i want more than just getting by, i want a life that i can share about without guilt and shame. i want a life that i like waking to on most days,. i want to be that person, who may not be a freaking saint, but i am certainly not slinking down dark alleys to keep what i am doing on the down-low.
i do, however have to get some work done, as i sit here starving, i am a far, far better person than i have ever been and i am grateful i have a template to be even more, just for today

∞ DT ∞