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do not necessarily have the same needs or goals, BUT i do see that isolating myself from them, will not end up very well, for me. one thing i have learned in recovery from listening and watching my peers, is that if someone repeats something loud enough and long enough, it becomes their truth, whether or not it really is. one of my ** truths** was been that i was better than my peers and was not really an addict. for the first eighteen months of my recovery, i insisted that was not the case, although as time went by, i insisted less and less publicly and internalized that story. only when i found myself in a room with a substance i really, really liked, that i had purchased and would not use because of the consequences, did i come close to seeing that story for what it was, a BIG LIE! with that experience under my belt, when my peers repeat the same bit over and over and over again, i wonder WTF are they hiding? whether or not they are “hiding” anything, is suddenly not relevant, because the way my reasoning goes is that if i do it and i am an addict in recovery, than they must do it as well. i project my ambitions, goals, though patterns and behaviors on to my peers and judge them accordingly. the reading this morning, while certainly speaking directly to the “birds of a feather” paradigm, also reminds me that as alike as my peers and i may be, there are some very glaring differences and i need to accept that instead of painting all of us with a very broad brush.
one of my pet peeves is when one of my peers shares in the “we” mode, making generalizations about me and addicts as a class, instead of sharing about themselves. as i was sitting in a meeting a few days ago, one peer went on and on with some psycho-babble about how “we” do this and think that. i listened with an open and afterwards examined what i heard and found that not only did it not apply, but it was actually more than a bit insulting. i had to take a deeper dive, because i have l;earned that when i am emotionally struck by something, there certainly may be an element of truth to what i just heard. after pondering it across the course of a few days, i am no longer insulted nor affected by it in any way. my emotional reaction was due to someone coming off as an “expert” on addict psychology and missing the mark by a long shot. whether they believed that story or not, was no longer relevant, i examined it and found it did not apply to my life nor to who ia was or am becoming, so i could pitch it to the bit bucket.
today, i have to live my own life and do so withing the confines of my journey to becoming a better me. not a whole lot of rainbows or unicorns, but i do not have the NEED to spin my world into that sort of vision. what i am taking away from this little exercise, is that if my peers need to do so, it is my task to stop judging them, based on my past less than stellar behavior, and listen for the underlying message of hope.

∞ DT ∞