Blog entry for:

i can be so obstinate towards doing the next right thing for myself. it is ironic that the part of this reading i focus on, year after year, has to do with what i **was not,** way back when. even though i stubbornly clung to my delusions and denial, i still kept coming back. oh i can do the whole **jazz hands** trip and say it was to **look good** for the justice system, BUT there has to be something else that kept me coming, that i have missed over the years of looking at those early days. when i take a considered and rational look at those days between getting clean and when the justice system considered me **rehabilitated,** i can see that surrendering to the fact that addiction would once again enslave me and threaten my freedom, was among the reasons i stayed when i could have walked away, as i had originally planned on doing.
sitting in the comfort of my home, some twenty odd years later, it is easy for me to see, that i had finally surrendered to the fact that i was an addict and IF i wanted a life worth living, i would have to surrender myself into the care of a fellowship that could teach me how to live. even though my recovery was FEAR-based, back in those days, there was enough HOPE to keep me interested in living a solution. what i saw when i got here, were the weak and feeble who could not use successfully. i still got high and it still worked for me, right up to the very last time i used. when i awoke eighteen months later in that basement apartment in New Jersey, what i saw was the strength of my peers, that i had always denied existed. here is where i can insert something about my miraculous refusal to use, when presented the perfect opportunity and sing praises to a HIGHER POWER, and perhaps this where i should do so. the fact is i “white-knuckled” my way through that night out of abject FEAR of losing my freedom to the chains of incarceration, once again.
this morning, i stay clean based on my FAITH in the fellowship i once considered a “vacation spot” for those who could not use. that fellowship gives me a life that is worth living and one that allows me to forgive myself for the manner in which i treated myself for decades on end, even after i got clean. i may not have stumbled into this fellowship filled with anything but contempt, but i remain, because my life has more than enough light in it, to convince me to stay. it is a good day to surrender to the fact that i am an addict and that IF i want something more, than i NEED to listen to what i am being told, by the POWER that fuels my recovery, just for today.

∞ DT ∞