Blog entry for:

i will need to make a decision to be just who i am.
insides matching outsides -- always a topic that runs through my head, NOT! well perhaps that is a bit strong, over the course of time i have been actually living the program, this has become more automatic and less of a chore i need to do. yes, i am still far from matching my superficial appearances to reflect the reality of who i am. i am approaching fifty and i still want to look like a twenty year old. that desire is manifest in the way i have my hair done, after all if i bleach it out, no one will be able to see the grey as it creeps up from my temples. i know that i am fooling no one but myself and yet i persist, denying the process of physical aging and hoping i will not be discovered for who i am becoming -- an old man. so now that is out of the way i can speak to the real issue of what i felt today when i read this reading, matching what is going on spiritually with what i show to the addicts with whom i share my recovery. this has always been difficult for me, since i have it in my head that somehow i have to remain a paragon of recovery, since i was among the few members who got clean, stayed clean and still attends the same meetings in my hometown where i got clean. some days it is a way to huge burden to carry, and i noodle around with the idea that perhaps i should find a new home group where i am just one of the pack and not part of every member’s sponsorship family and other days i think i should just keep doing what i always have done, hoping that this too shall pass.
well those days of indecision and inaction have come to an end and i will do what ever it takes to stay clean today, including spending the time and energy to attend meeting where i am just one of the pack. mu experience over the past six days backs up that decision. no i am not looking for a new home group although in the course of my travels one may arrive. and no i am not seeking a so called pure program where everyone has multiples of years clean, although i may discover that too. no what i am seeking is evidence that i am not unique and that regardless of what is going on in my life and my recovery, i too can stay clean no matter what. yes i will still keep attending the two meetings that i have frequented over my little winter of discontent, not out of obligation or concern, because i have come to believe that i will get what i need. i now realize that it was not the meetings, the parade of newcomers, the incestuous nature of the groups nor the lack of a pure message that was driving me away from those meetings, it was me, wrapped up in self-obsession that had developed th3e notion that somehow i was different, and today i realize that i am the same as everyone else, just another addict in recovery. i also realize that the commitment i made to myself all those days ago, needs to once again be reasserted. that commitment? to learn how to live the program to the best of my ability no matter what, and just for today i think i will!

∞ DT ∞