Blog entry for:

that certain something to make me **all right.** yesterday, as a part of a day that ended-up revolving around recovery, mine and two of the men who call me their sponsor. what i GOT to see was how i once was, a portrait of me in my early recovery, which set off a whole chain reaction of notions, ideas and feelings that certainly seemed more than a little bit out of place. what i saw, was a person who could not demonstrate any sort of empathy, feigned or otherwise, when they were put on the spot to do so. whether they were nervous or this is who they happen to be at the time, is an issue to address further down the line. what it got started within me, goes right to the part of the second step i am currently completing, namely the EXACT nature of my current manifestation of insanity.
a quick trip down memory lane: when i cam to recovery, it was all about me. i used people for what i could get out of them and anything i did that may have appeared to be selfless or altruistic, certainly was not. i always had an expectation of a return and with interest. it follow, that compassion and empathy were not part of my repertoire of feelings and i was not looking to add them either. in early recovery, the story about being “bigger than life,” and better than i was, certainly ruled the roost. as part of that “image” enhancement program i learned to feign compassion and i could trot it out, on cue, and be as compassionate as my peers. part of my “fake it, until i make it” program. life went on and during those eighteen months of denial, i became very good at trotting out various feelings as needed, like some sort of trained circus animal, but inside i was still as cold as i was the day i arrived in the room. nothing really had changed except the fact i was not using and i was coming to the deadline of that changing as well.
when i worked the steps, for real, the first time, i was startled to find how uncaring and unresponsive i was to the world around me. everything had a price for me and there were still strings attached to all i gave away. what i have gotten over the course of staying clean and working steps is the ability to FEEL compassion and empathy, not just feign them to impress the crowd. the nature of my insanity today, is that i am still the same person as i was when i walked into the room. while that is certainly true on a very base level, the fact that feelings long ago denied away into the bit-bucket, are part of my life. looking at the demonstration i saw yesterday, i can now see how others once saw me, as i am more than certain that my peers could detect the falseness in my simulations of compassion and empathy. i am now an enhanced version of the person i once was, and what i am looking for is a restoration to who i was, before i wrote the story of needing to be a bigger than life, twenty-four/seven. certainly food for thought on this fine Thursday morning and certainly getting down to the point my sponse was trying to make, yesterday afternoon as we sat discussing my work on STEP TWO.

∞ DT ∞