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to an unchanging and rigid truth, nearly killed me and certainly made those days before i became a member much more difficult and more drawn out than they needed to be. although this may seem way off-topic, i told a co-worker what i felt about my efforts to help them to learn how to do our jobs, this morning. it was not a pretty thing to see and although it was certainly part of my truth, i am not all that sure it was part of THE TRUTH. when i came to recovery my truth and THE TRUTH were certainly the same thing and i was incapable or better put unwilling to open my mind to any sort notion that i was not correct. i was not some drug-addled crazy person and had a fairly good grip on reality and what it meant to live in the world around me, or so i believed. i know now that is not anywhere close to the TRUTH and have learned to become a bit more open-minded about ideas and notions that do not fit into my worldview.
my frustration with my co-worker fits into that pattern as well. i have become good at what i do, even though i would prefer not to do it anymore. there is a rhyme and reason to how i troubleshoot and because of it, i arrive at answers and even solutions in an expeditious manner. my co-worker has asked me to help them develop a method that works for them and how i do things does not fit in any way, with how they see things. what they see as important is often trivial and they often ignore the most obvious and important puzzle pieces that they have uncovered. i see their struggle with work as a metaphor for my struggles with recovery and what i needed to see to finally “get” freedom fro active addiction.
the two things i held as the TRUTH when i came to recovery was that i was not an addict of any sort and i did NOT need to accept the guidance of my peers in the rooms. in fact, i believed i was without peers, as they were all brainwashed into believing things that were not true and could not be verified. until i gave up what i “knew” i was hopeless and would have been one of those on the permanent recycle treadmill: get clean ⇛ get off paper ⇛ start using ⇛ do something idiotic ⇛ and end up before the judge, once again. that cycle might have lasted years or mere days, but i am pretty certain it would have been my half-life. just as i cannot get my co-worker to stop missing the forest because they are so focused on the trees. i get that behavior and until i accepted that i was an addict, the trees were far more important that the forest itself. as long as i could find a preponderance of evidence to support my notion of the TRUTH, i was doomed to being the “relapse guy.”
i am still stubborn and resistant, even rebellious to new ideas that seem to contradict what i believe to be the truth, i have not gotten that much better. these days, however, i can at least be open to the notion that what i think i know, is just that, a thought colored by the stories i tell myself, to bolster the truth as i want to see it. from that admission springs the HOPE that i too, can see the light of day and stay clean one more day.

∞ DT ∞