friendship, laughter, guidance, and much, much more, from my peers in recovery and for those gifts, i am grateful this morning. lately however, i find myself in their presence, less and less, as my life has taken on some new and different dimensions as a result of their gifts to me. what the world sees and what my peers see, may not seem to be all that different, but in reality, no one out in the so-called **REAL** world has many clues about who i am and how i got to the place i occupy in society today. when i start to believe that i have become one of the other 85%, because they **assume** that is who i am, i run the risk of spinning down into a world where a little bit of this or that, sounds like a good idea, after all, they can do it. one of my peers, who i do not get to see very often, however is worthy of a call out this morning:
Todd T,
NINETEEN (19) years clean!
Congrats, my friend and keep coming back.
the odd part of all of this, is once upon a time, my life consisted of work, home, meetings and fellowship. my world revolved around recovery and i was unwilling to give up one second of my time and energy to anything but home life and my life in recovery. being a person who swings from one extreme to another, trying to balance my life with the “normies” and my peers in recovery, is a task i am not doing very well these days. my only saving grace are the men that call me their sponsor, calling or texting nearly every day, to remind me, what world i really do belong in, and what world will never be mine. i am an addict in recovery and wholly accept that i am powerless over addiction. the upshot of that notion, is that it is me who bears the responsibility to ask for the power to balance my life between those two worlds. i could whine and belabor the point, but to what ends. the facts are simple, i am lucky if i make one meeting a week, lately. if i want to continue to get what i have got, it is up to me to take the action to bring that world back into my life, start the pendulum swinging back the other way, as it were. perhaps a renewed commitment to attending meetings will provide the impetus i need to get unstuck,” it certainly sounds like a risk i am willing to take, just for today.
∞ DT ∞