Blog entry for:

i am gaining the freedom to live.
and never in my life did i believe that i had wreckage, much less the responsibility to go back and repair that damage, after all in all my blame-shifting exercises, i had rationalized away any part that i may have had. working the ninth step was quite an experience, especially when i realized that the person i had done the greatest damage to was me. but self-forgiveness is a topic for another day, after all today is about the gifts of the ninth step and how it has affected the course of my recovery.
needless to say, when i approached the ninth step each time in my cycle of step work, i had many fears, expectations and reservations. the first gift i received as a result of a bit of perseverance and encouragement from my sponsor was a sense of humility. for the first time, i really got to see who i was, and a glimpse of the person i could become. as i progressed through my lengthy amends list, taking care of those immediate ones and asking for the power to take care of those that were beyond my current resources, i begin to feel HOPE that even i could continue on this path. however, the greatest gift of all was that i was no longer a victim of my past. the ghosts and skeletons that had long haunted me were exploding into a irrecoverable bit of fluff that they were actually were the entire time. for the first time since i started to use, i no longer had to look over my shoulder, wondering who was behind me waiting for their chance to stab me in the back. for the first time since i started using, i could face myself in the mirror and not plan the lies i needed to tell that day, no longer feeling the urge to plan my day based on who i had fucked over and needed to avoid. the result of this was yes, i was finally FREE to live this life that the steps to this point had been preparing me for since i made the decision to become an addict in recovery. and i found the willingness to start to LIVE THE PROGRAM by moving forward into my tenth step. well once again i am examining my past as part of my fourth step and am anxious to move quickly through to nine, so i do not have to live here very long. i do not like living in the past anymore and that is a good thing!

∞ DT ∞