Blog entry for:

as conscious contact and connection is quite a mouthful. i know from the content of my source material that what i used as my seed, was meant to be a summary of what was presented, but it felt more like “click-bait” to me. that being said, the material that came after it, gave me quite a lot to think about, especially about what i felt about intimacy, way back when and how i feel about it now. in fact it seems to hearken back to something i alluded to in my post yesterday Maturity about how some of my peers avoid sharing anything “real” about who they are and what is happening in their lives. i see my own behavior in that regard as a symptom of my overwhelming fear of intimacy that has pervaded my life for as long as i can remember.
i know that living a lie and hiding the shame of who i believed i was from the world around me, cultivated that fear and contributed to much of the social anxiety i still feel to this day. coming to the rooms, before i accepted recovery as a manner of living, i learned all the trite words, clichés and slogans that i thought might keep my peers at bay. i could spout off the readings by memory, maintaining eye contact with other attendees and at least in my own mind, look as if i actually was letting them get to know me, when in fact i was cratering to my fear of discovery. as i stayed clean, and actually learned to live a program of recovery, i allowed more and more of myself to be revealed to my peers, my loved ones and my closed-mouth friends. i actually began to understand what intimacy was and how important it was for me to allow myself to be free to show who i was, especially to those i had grown to trust.
moving into the here and now, i see that consciously choosing to connect with my peers, by sharing the person i am today, is an exercise in FAITH as well as intimacy. tonight as i sit with my sponsee, i may end up revealing a bit more about myself as he shares his latest writing assignment. i am also pretty sure that as i walk through this day, i will have more than one opportunity to allow someone in, or choose to hide behind jargon and speeches. the choices i make in the moment define who i want to be and today, i want to be more consciously connected to those whom i choose to have as part of my life. great work when i can get it! 😜

∞ DT ∞