Blog entry for:

i know and have FAITH that the program can help me change, ONE step at a time, even if i choose to act differently from time to time.
well it has been a week and the weekend does not promise to be any softer or easier.what i want is relief from myself and my obsession with self, most of the time. what i get, well that is all up to me, is it not or as the the natives in France are apt to say; n'est-ce pas?
so i was about to launch into a litany of excuse, why i am sort of exempt from step work. the truth is, even after some time clean, i still find that i NEED to reach a point where pain drives me to write. i know the relief that i will get. i understand the principle of living on grace will only go so far and i am certain that while all of that is true, i still face challenges when it comes to sitting down and doing the work.
anyhow, no promises about writing my looming FOURTH STEP today, nor will you here me lament about how much pain i am currently suffering. there really is not that much pain afflicting me as i write this, which only feeds my delusions of somehow after all this time and step work, i may be cured or at least well enough to say i am no longer an addict. symptomatically, that has such a veneer of veracity, that it is spooky and as i go down that particular rabbit hole, i SEE the danger of having a bit of recovery and some clean time. which brings me back to the point i started with, it has been a week, that is far from over. the fact that i got a week off and the fact that i could travel to celebrate a life event, is the RESULT of the work i have done in the program. it is not my right nor am i i entitled or guaranteed anything just because i am clean today. across the course of my clean time, there have been periods, some quite lengthy, where i was in lapses from the the spiritual principles, that i purportedly ascribe to. even lately, i have had to ask for the strength to give up a shortcoming and now am asking to have the substitution removed. the evidence of my ongoing addiction, is that i reacted to a stressful situation, did something to change the way i felt and ended up doing it for almost a year. now that i have stopped doing it, i want to substitute another behavior to fill that NEED, when as i suit here and write this, this morning i see, that i can just feel and allow the stress i felt a year ago, and imagine i will feel today, to just be. in fact, the time has come to suit up and hit the streets, to pound out a bit of the stress that felt so overwhelming, not that long ago.i am clean today and perhaps as the day goes by, i will feel more in recovery, than i do right now. i do know what i have to do and the time has come to just do it!

∞ DT ∞