Blog entry for:

i am a human being: a member of society who has gifts and flaws like everyone else. once again, my source material was spot on for where i am today. after my return to the disaster of swallowing my feelings around what was shared and having a shitty night of sleep, i did the unthinkable: i made an appointment to go over my yet unwritten STEP ONE, for next Saturday morning. i can sense that STEP ONE is working me over and all the prevaricating and procrastinating i have been doing, i feel it is time to address my recovery head-on through my step writing assignment. i am not on the cusp of a relapse. spiritual or physical, but i am certainly uncomfortable in my own skin these days. for me, that is a symptom of my need to move on, being stuck, sucks, especially when it is something i have more than a modicum of power over.
the biggest gift of long term recovery, at least in my own mind, is the self-awareness i have developed about what i going on inside of me. yes, it is more than wonderful not to be owned by addiction and even though i am an addict in recovery, i am certainly way more than that. i know that when i started this recovery gig, the last thing i wanted to identify myself as, was an addict of any sort. in early recovery, i took on that identity as some sort of badge of honor and used my passion to beat parts of the fellowship into looking the way i wanted them to look. that behavior was evident the other night and although i stopped myself from returning to the full blown recovery purist that i can be, i still took on all sorts of judgements from a place of righteous indignation. even though i know that is part of me and my history, i am also way better than that, so the clue i got this morning, was it is time to do the work. now, i have made the commitment to myself and my sponsor, so there is no turning back, as that is also part of who i am, i do what i say i am going to do and live up to the commitments i make.
today, right here and right now, i may not have all the pieces of who i am and who i am becoming fit into the puzzle of what i am, but i am certainly starting to get the straight edges together and ready to embark on doing the real work that reveal all that i can be. as i begin to admit that i have unresolved pain and grief over the passing of my parents, angst about not being able to retire, the last thing i need in my life is a full blown attack of my less than stellar bits and pieces that are still lingering from my checkered past. my time of just living STEPS TEN through TWELVE has reached its limit and i know what the next correct thing for me to do is, WORK THE STEPS as if my life depends upon it, because it does.

∞ DT ∞