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i often wonder about the value i bring to my fellowship, my peers, my family members and those i love and care about. i am dark and cynical and highly critical of seemingly everyone and everything in my life. nothing is good enough for me and i know this is an attitude i brought to recovery and one that has yet to be removed. my reaction to all of this, is to suppress and deny it exists, hiding behind a wall of spiritual camouflage and doing my best to project a “positive” image to the world around me. staying clean and living a program of active recovery does not seem to be paying off, especially when all i can see in myself are all the things i do not like in others. so i spin what i do, justifying and rationalizing away any concerns i may have and allowing the part of me i call addiction to start the whispers of how “bad,” i am.
the flip side to that particular piece of self-deprecating talk, is that there are people in my life, who trust me, value my insights and seem to want to spend their time with me. contrary to how i see myself, i often take the “high road” and actually can listen to what they are telling me, without deflecting their praise or defending myself, when the offer “feed back.” part of what actually implementing my amends to myself has accomplished, is that i can hear the “lie” for what it is, when i go down that dark road of not being any better than when i was actively using. having teeth that stay in my mouth 24-7, dropping 35 or so pounds and becoming more fit demonstrates to me, that i do value myself, as all of that took an effort that i once was unwilling to do. my life seesaws between having value and being worthless and i wonder what action i need to take, in order to find the true balance in this aspect of my life.
as i sat this morning, i did not really find any path out of this dilemma. what came to me, is that when someone says that they trust me or that i am of value to them, i need to accept that as truth and trust that maybe they see what i am blind to. that does not mean i am going to go out and solicit compliments or praise, but i am certainly going to allow myself the freedom to see those parts of my life and myself, and accept them as part of the whole picture. it is a good day to be clean and even though the smoke hangs heavy this morning, a good day to take care of myself, by getting my miles in.

∞ DT ∞