Blog entry for:

accept myself, exactly as i am, just another garden variety addict, with good and not all that stellar attributes and a shitload of opinions, was not the first thing i thought bout when i got clean and finally came to in recovery. oh sure, i heard my predecessors speaking of how they came to accept themselves, but i already thought i accepted who i was and that who i was was never, ever going to change. needless to say, i was more than a bit rigid in my beliefs when i got here. i was not “struck clean,” nor did i just add water and voilà, i fully accepted how and what i was. nope it took a very long minute, in fact it took twenty-four years before i reached the base layer and finally revealed to myself and my sponse who i just might be. that is not to say that i had to wait that long to accept who i was at any point in the process, all along the path, i had more than a few instances of accepting who i was in real-time, it just took that long to free myself to stop being who i was not.
this morning as i sat and again as i climbed the imaginary Mt Kilimanjaro at the rec center, what i kept coming back to was the shit-ton of opinions that i have yet to evaluate whether or not they are worth defending or would be better off in the bit bucket, lost forever as i move on. it really is ironic that i hate being judged by others when i am judging others all the time, especially in the gym. i work hard when i work out and if i do not sweat and get my pulse rate up into the cardio range, i feel as if i am slacking. the fact that i hold myself to that standard, does not mean everyone in the gym needs to be the same way, perhaps it is the social aspect that keeps them coming back.
i can carry that sort of expectation into the rooms with me. my program is one i work actively on a daily basis. i do not take a day off from STEPS TEN, ELEVEN and TWELVE, even when no one is looking. it is just who i am and i hold myself to be accountable to myself to accomplish that on a daily basis. many of my peers, however, choose to be a bit less diligent than i am in working their program. that does not mean that they are any less committed to living a program than i am, they just go about it in a different manner and i am coming to see that is a good thing for them, and need not be judged by me, in any manner, unless of course, i am asked to offer my opinion. accepting myself as i am today is the path to accepting others and that is the path i choose to trod upon, just for today.

∞ DT ∞