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really are not good labels to judge my feelings or what happens in the course of my life on its own terms. when i came to recovery, it was all about binary judgements about who and what was happening in the moment. events, feelings and people were simply good or evil. in that black and white world, everything made sense as it could be neatly labelled, and tucked away into its proper place. no further consideration was required on my part and i could trip happily along my substance laden way. yes, i like to tell myself that WAS the case. more than likely i glossed over many details and ignored plenty in order to make such a simple determination. what it came down to, basically was did i get what i wanted and if so, it must have been a “good.”
getting clean was just a continuation of that same pattern, albeit without the cushion of dis or dat, to help me rationalize my way into dropping everything, especially feelings into those buckets of goodness or badness. it took a helluva a long time, to even start to see shades of grey in the events of life, much less stop seeing feelings as either positive or negative. truthfully, when i was in the either or mode when it came to judging my feelings, instead of experiencing them, i wanted to revert back to trying to change them, rather than allow them to change on their own. of all the tasks i have undertaken as part of my recovery journey, the one that has been the most fruitful, for me anyhow, is detaching my feelings from any sort of value judgements. feelings just are and are transient and are harbingers of my reactions to the world around me. as i learned to allow them to take me to where i needed to go, and stop suppressing those feelings i found to be “bad,” i got to be more present for my life and live life in a more serene and yes even spiritual manner.
anyhow, today i feel all sorts of mixed up feelings, for the past three days i have been reaching out to a peer, who is having issues. their responses have been a bit dark and brief. i know that the sadness i feel for my peer, is a “good” reaction for what they are going through. the frustration i feel because i am not getting the results i desire, is also a good thing, as it indicates that although i am still selfish and self-centered, i still care about how i affect the lives of others. even that probably does not belong in the good and bad buckets as i can only judge by the immediate reaction and am clueless about the long term ramifications of my efforts. so, just for today, i will look for the next correct action to take and do my best to leave the judgements of how those actions make me feel, behind.

∞ DT ∞