Blog entry for:

i have yet to figure out what exactly this means for me. i will however continue seek the answer to this question.
i do know, what this meant for me in active addiction. it meant using so i would not feel anything. i gladly traded joy for the ability not to feel sadness. i gladly gave up the ability to feel care, concern and love for another so i would not get hurt. i gladly accepted isolation and distance to prevent anyone in my life from knowing who or what i was. i was a zombie, numbing my feelings so i could maintain the LIE that i did not have a problem with using. i believed that by being an emotional zombie, i was somehow superior to those i saw who felt and expressed their feelings. and this behavior almost got me dead. whenever one of those terrible feelings crept in, i used more and more to wall myself off from them.
today, i have come to the understanding, that feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are. i do not willingly trade any of the sadness or pain i feel as i go through LIFE, for the joy and love i have found. although there are times i forget that emotions and feelings are a gift of recovery, i have yet to die of an emotion. the emotional swings i suffered through during early recovery have gone, but none of those feelings are gone, i have just found the means to live through them and be okay with them.
so back to the orginal question, i guess i am starting to see what emotional balance means for me -- namely feeling all of them and responding appropriately to each in its turn --
DT