Blog entry for:

of freedom, seems to be what i get to recover in, when i decide that i do need need kudos and accolades from the world in general. do not get me wrong, my ego is still over-sized enough to want to have each and every **positive** thing i do, shouted out on the internet and to have the **negative** buried in a hole at the minimum, twenty miles deep. reminders such as the reading this morning, for this addict anyhow, are what i need to hear to make a conscious choice to keep that ego in check. seeing my recovery as its own reward, is never as easy as it sounds, after all, i was so freaking nasty and self-centered when i was running and gunning, i want to have the fact that i am not acting in that manner anymore, acknowledged by everyone in the freaking world. i want to be the model of the recovering addict, the image of this anonymous fellowship, the star guru of the twelve steps. all that comes quite naturally to me, what does not, is allowing myself to recover without the whole world watching me.
learning how to live anonymously was not the challenge, after all, i came in recovery with twenty-five years or so of living life on the down-low. there certainly was more than a bit of guilt and shame about what i did to feed my addiction, but most of all, it was addiction itself that i was attempting to hide. as long as i kept that fact of my life quiet to the world in general, i could live in the denial of what i had become. how i saw myself was a function of what i wanted to project to those who were in my life: cool, calm, collected and someone who could use socially, with the best of them. even though the games i played with what and how i used, were certainly clues that maybe i was not in control of my using. as i slid along the spiritual gutter of what i had become, there certainly was very little hope of me, ever having the desire to get clean and stay clean. the irony of this whole situation was that it took a rat bastard that i still have a bit of a resentment towards, to get to a place where i could see what i had become and have the desire to be something different.
today, without the glare of publicity and the whole world watching, i am free to try out new ideas and behaviors, to see if they fit. anonymity allows me the choice to do the next right thing or better still NOT do the next wrong one. while i may not get my “brownie points” for being a good egg, does it really matter? certainly a great notion to ponder as i commute to work after four days off. might as well get that journey started.

∞ DT ∞