Some memes

thick, murky darkness, many parts of my life, remained on the down-low for far too long. the more i share my once secret shame, the less power it seems to have over me, as i discovered during a FIFTH STEP with one of the men i sponsor, just the other day. i have to admit there is still FEAR and certainly a plethora of feelings around it, BUT, as i shared the other day, i realized that i do NOT have to take responsibility for what happened, it was perpetrated upon me and twice brought to the light of day, by someone who purports to love me. they and only they bear the responsibility for the event, and i bear the responsibility for what i did with it, specifically create a lie that defined me for decades on end.
there are days, when i want to reach out and inflict a similar sort of pain upon them, and others where i see that their actions were the result of petty and shallow inconveniences that were wrought upon their life. most of the time i see that they did the best with what they had and are clueless about how i felt and what i did with their actions upon me. today, from a healthier and happier perspective i know they will never own what they did, and i have stopped having any expectation that they will wake up and smell the coffee any time soon. my stuff is to forgive and make sure i do not treat anyone in anything that is remotely as shameful or damaging, as i walk through my daily existence.
what amazes the most, is how long i carried that secret shame and how many times i glossed over it in a FOURTH and FIFTH STEP cycle, telling myself that i had it “handled.” the fact was that i did not want to “handle” it and as i was taught, if one ignores something for long enough, it is no longer relevant. well, that manner of dealing with the stuff that is inside me, kept me sick for far longer than i needed to be. today i am saddened by the fact that my reluctance to deal with something as damaging as this was based on the whole notion of a pain threshold. i perceived that there would be too much pain to tell my sponsor and that the level of pain i felt was far, far, far less. i know that was part of the lie and now that i am freed from slavery to that lie, i can see i am much better off being whole and genuine about everything that “trips my trigger,” no matter how long ago it may have happened. i also know that releasing that pain, was the best thing i have ever done, since i decided to become a member and live a program of active recovery. those feelings did not kill me, but they might have spun me down into active addiction, if i had held on to them, much longer. with that in mind, i think it is time to get dressed out and take my tour of da 'hood, just for today.

∞ DT ∞