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faith, and humility are concepts i was clueless about, before i came to recovery. as i sat at in the margins and castigated myself for being so weak and feeble because i could not stop using and **needed** to be **around** recovery, those principles certainly seemed no closer to becoming reality in my world. those eighteen months or so, taught me one thing anyhow, that maybe i was not responsible for being an addict. the lie that i was “weak and feeble” was fed from the story i told myself about others in my life, who lacked the ability to use the way i did. for me, it was always a game of determining my value versus those around me, and it was a game i made sure i rigged, so i could feel good about myself. it is no wonder that it took as long as it did for me to accept responsibility for my recovery and my life.
this morning as i sat, i was drawn into what is going on in my relationship between myself and a couple of my peers. i see in both of them a refuse to take responsibility for their recovery and using smoke and mirrors to shift that responsibility off onto others. i recognize those behaviors because that is my main go to, when things get rough. if i believe that i do not need to change, or that i physically or mentally incapable of doing something, i do not even have to try and i can surrender to that fact and my self-esteem does not take a hit. i am still equal to everyone else in the value game i have been playing all of my life. i trick myself in accepting what i know is a lie, and i accept that lie as truth. once i have internalized that lie, all the barriers to self-acceptance are wide open to me, after all, this is just the way i was made, so there is no reason to fret and worry.
if that was where i got stuck, today would promise to be filled with angst for this addict. fortunately for me, i decided that what is reality for me, shifting the blame for being less than perfect to how i was created or on what i may lack, does not diminish my responsibility to me, myself and i. as i prepare to head on down to the office and give my employer the benefit of my skills, i can see that despite the obstacles i want to put in my own path, the road to accepting myself does not end when i hit the first barrier i have imposed upon myself. it is only through perseverance and diligently applying those principles i started this exercise with, that i can be better than i am right now. self-acceptance for me does not require perfection, just willingness to act on those once foreign spiritual principles, in my daily life.

∞ DT ∞