Some memes

that my needs or desires outweigh my ability, practicing humility by asking for help is the best option for me. i cannot count the number of times i was offered help and said loudly and aggressively i can do it myself! that behavior existed before i got high the very first time and persisted through the first five years of my recovery. even today, i still want to default into being able to do it myself. self-sufficiency has not yet found its grave within me.
when i came to recovery i knew exactly what i needed to do, what i believed i was capable of doing: anything that i needed and how much help i required: NONE! any suggestions i received, i evaluated as not applicable to my situation and promptly discarded them. it is quite a feat that i survived with a fellowship that at the time was not as kind as it is these days. nevertheless, they continued to offer help and at times grudgingly accepted that help. what i discovered was that when i accepted their help i was not suddenly less than them nor was i greater than them by accepting their offerings. it took time for hat lesson to sink in and the lie i was living screamed loudly that i was giving up myself and letting others in was going to hurt me in the long run. the internal battle between what i believed and what reality was presenting kept me tied in knots for quite some time. when i finally reviewed the preponderance of the evidence, i was finally ready to start down a road of humility and out of self-sufficiency.
it is not as if all of a sudden i found humility to be my only path. even today, i still chafe under the imagined yoke of suggestions being mandatory and in conflict with everything i think i know about the truth of being me. what has changed is that i no longer throw any suggestion out without consideration or an attempt to implement it. when my sponsor suggested that i needed to leave the visibility of service committee work, i resisted with all my might. as i withdrew and started to form an identity in the fellowship based on my experience instead of my roles, i started to feel freed from the constraints i set upon myself. i have found a place in the fellowship hat does not require that i be the loudest and most self-righteous voice in the room.
humility, even with some time in active recovery, does not always come easy for me. i have been in more than one dispute that required a TENTH STEP correction after the fact. i still hate believing i need help from anyone else. i still resist suggestions. what has changed is that i am open-minded to that help and those suggestions and have the ability to ponder them before i accept or discard them. i will still fall back into rejection of help and self-sufficiency, that is part of who i am. who know maybe with enough time and step work that may change, there is always hope.

∞ DT ∞