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in my life used to be horrible, now that i am in recovery it is all that has changed and now it is totally wonderful! i cannot count the number of times i have heard that refrain, or something similar, when my peers share their experience, strength and hope. once upon a time, when i heard this theme being expressed, everything afterword faded into BLAH - BLAH - BLAH. each time it was repeated it bolstered the story in my head that no one got clean, everyone was lying about their clean time and were using in the parking lot and twelve step recovery was just a ginormous scam. i tired of having so much smoke being blown up my ass and was planning my escape, from having live in abstinence, when the sword of justice was removed from above my head. i was certainly a piece of work, way back when, but even today, when i hear that theme, i immediately wonder what the fVck they are attempting to sweep under the carpet, as no one in my experience has a “perfect” life and is 100% accepting of where they are.
alas, i have digressed into what others may say and do, and have left myself and my feelings behind. that happens some days and i do not hate myself for slipping into a judgemental mode. as i return my focus to me, one of my favorite subjects., i can see that it is true that i have come a very long way, since those days of being a thirty day wonder and fronting as a “model of THE recovering addict.” as many of my peers can attest to, i do not often share the “brighter, sunnier” aspects of my life and tend to focus on what is not yet up to my ever-increasing expectations. when there is a tectonic shift in how i see myself, which is more often than not a good thing, i share about how disconcerting it is to be seeing a whole new landscape. when i reach down into the dark morass of my past and pull out some unflattering, humiliating or deprecating event, and find humor in it, i am healing, even though some may see that sort of behavior as destructive. it has been a minute since i have been a newcomer and even some of my peers share about being a “newcomer every day,” i roll my eyes and the judgement machine kicks in. even after a minute clean, i hear the Charlie Brown adult voices starting. so yes, i still have a ways to go.
i know that somewhere in my recovery experience, it was suggested that i share for the newcomer. i am certain that for more than a minute, i did just that and you know what, it did little to stop the parade of newcomers exiting stage left. i saw that what i needed to share was what life was like in recovery, for me, personally. i needed to take out the generalizations and the advice. i needed to remove any pronouns that referred to other as part of a collective, including but not limited to “us, we and you.” most importantly i needed to remove the clichés and bumper stickers from my vocabulary and speak from my heart, rather than from my head. i may not staunch the flow of newcomers out of the room with that behavior, but i certainly know that when i do, i am being genuine and showing who i really am, just for today.

∞ DT ∞