Blog entry for:

capacity to be honest was certainly my state of being, when i finally arrived in the rooms of recovery. over the days i have been clean, that capacity has grown and today, i am honest, most of the time. as someone who **likes to get away with something,** moving into a state where i say what i mean and do what i say, has not been a easy or even an instant journey. this morning, as i tried to sit and actually **listen** what i kept coming back to was the notion that maybe i am too hard on myself and as a result too hard on my peers and acquaintances.
i was asked to share a bit of my story, on selection from our literature last night. i chose a passage that speaks about why our fellowship decided it needed to stand on its own and become wholly independent from other TWELVE STEP fellowships, so an addict could identify with those in the rooms, from the very start. the content of my share included how i am not handling the state of the world very well and as a result, those who shared after me, seemed to be honest about how they were feeling as well. there was one exception and if i had never spoken to them face-to-face and in person, i would have been quite okay with what they shared. i was more than a bit disturbed by what appeared, at least in my judgemental mind, to be a total whitewash and i thought i had let it go. surprise, surprise, it rose to the top of the stack this morning and made me look at what i am feeling and how i present those feelings and attitudes to the world around me.
giving my peer the benefit of the doubt, which is the least i can do, what i felt last night and what was echoed this morning was whether or not i was showing the world my true face, or was i hiding what i was really feeling under a stack of feel good disguises. the reason i wonder about that, is that i am very good at doing so, or at least i used to be. no matter how i was feeling, no matter what was going on around me, no matter how “put out” i felt about serving my peers, i was always the one who could string together what i considered the most upbeat and hopeful shares. i was the “Mr Positivity” who never has a cloud in the sky and was the epitome of the Country and Western songs played backwards. my life in recovery was always so much better than i was using and i was always so grateful for all the gifts i had received that, life on life's terms was just fine and dandy, all day, every day, 24/7.
it is true that after a few rounds of steps, i swung the other way, into there was always something happening in my life, that was far from stellar and not to my liking, especially when it came to me and my recovery. i had turned to the dark side and the only HOPE i shared was that i was still clean. last night, what i shared was a theme that i have been sharing here, namely how Fear, Frustration and Anxiety have been ruling the roost. what i “got” in return was how my peers were feeling and what we had in common, as all of deal with life in this 1984 Brave New World. this morning i have not been magically relieved of my FFA syndrome, but i am better able to move forward and stop being angry, full of rage and paralyzed as a result of it. as i step out into the morning to get some steps in, i can be okay knowing that it is not all dark and that there is certainly a bit of light, starting to illuminate those darker corners of who i am, just for today.

∞ DT ∞