Blog entry for:

today, i can laugh at that misconception because i know how full my life in recovery can be. well the whole trick is how i look at it, and what particular pair lenses i choose to use to view my life now and my life then.
before i really get rolling a quick note:

Happy 20^TH Anniversary of your clean date DENISE!
THANK YOU for making service enjoyable again!

okay on to the meat of my thought process this morning. what i started to say, and where i was going , was that how i judge the various phases of my life all depends on the filters i choose to apply when i am looking at them.
of course, when i came to recovery. i thought the life i was living was the best. after all, whether or not i acknowledged it, i knew that for me, it could not get any better. so i had moved into acceptance of that lifestyle, and protected my fragile self from the damage hoping for more would do to me. the irony of this is, that acceptance process had completed on its own with absolutely no help from me, and had become invisible and undetectable to me. the same process in recovery, is sa struggle, requiring my effort and is never undetectable or invisible, i seem to need to feel every sling and arrow of the process in the here and now. i do not get respite from the process, nor would i care to. after all, the only way i can get respite is to stop my process of active recovery, and allow the events to transpire as they will. that is nit an acceptable alternative for me today, as i am still too much of a control freak to allow that to happen. so i take my power where i can, and today, i accept the power to choose to be in ACTIVE recovery, damn the torpedoes -- full speed ahead.
anyhow, where was i, oh yeah the filters, and the process. i just find it amusing when i hear members share how their worst day clean is better than their best day using. that is a comforting thought, and for me, i hear the lie. after all, there were more than a few very good times in active addiction, but the time between those good times was getting longer and longer, and those good times came with increasingly less frequency. there have also been so desperately dark times in my recovery, but the longer i stay clean, the less often they come, and the more gratitude i feel for the times between.
however for the most part, in recovery and in active addiction my days are somewhere in between the good times and the dark times, and for that i am grateful also. i do have a very full life these days, i do get all sorts of gifts on a daily basis, and i do appreciate the fact that i can have and survive my feelings. because i choose to stay clean today.
so it is a good day to recover, i am willing to continue to make the transition between steps 10 and 11. most of all i am grateful for having the time to do this sort of activity, writing what is on my mind, with no fear of who it may or may not offend. after all, this is my space and i can say what i want to.
off to the streets and into my new day.

∞ DT ∞