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need me? well, i do not need any of you, either! i am going to go eat worms, so there. defiance, denial, isolation, contempt for the world around me and building myself up at the expense of others was my overarching response to life in active addiction. that mantra persisted through my phase of mere abstinence and into my early recovery. i did not believe what i was being told and certainly did not believe i was an addict of any sort, that was just what i “fronted” to the justice system to get a “get out of jail free” card. i may not have got that hall pass, but i did get a very light sentence, with which i was incapable of complying, until the consequences got steeper than i was willing to pay. even then, it was all about compliance and doing recovery for them. when i discovered that i was really desperate and that fronting recovery was not paying off, i reached a jumping off point and took the plunge. that fork in road has certainly made all the difference.
mixed metaphors and allusions aside, today i am grateful i got to that point and decided to take what i thought was the easier, softer path, but once i started on it, i realized that the other way would have been a whole lot easier. nevertheless, i got over pouting about the world treating me like shit and started to look for the true root cause of why i felt so entitled and so put down. being a single white male, i can honestly say it was not society or culture that caused me to fail, as i had the white male privilege boost and all i had to be was adequate. that of course was the rub, i got what i got, because i chose to be merely adequate and never respected or esteemed myself to actually excel at anything. the deeper i dove into the process of the steps, the more i uncovered that i never trusted myself enough to put myself out there. i never thought highly enough of myself to take a chance on doing something more. i never esteemed myself enough to move beyond the safety of the walls i built in my isolation. as the pain of being there, became greater than the work of growing into something more, i actually did the work and that work is ongoing still to this day.
today, as i prepare to go out for a training workout, i know that i may not succeed at running 10K in fifty-five minutes or less. in times past, i would not even bother trying to do so and would just coast my way forward. today, i think more of myself and certainly am no longer afraid to attempt something that seems impossible. today, i see the chaos in the world as something i cannot affect on a grand scale, BUT, i can bring a touch of kindness, consideration and compassion to those i encounter throughout my day. little by little i can change myself and in changing myself through this process of recovery, i make the world incrementally a bit better, just for today.

∞ DT ∞