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to become who i want to be. the question then becomes, who do i want to be? good thing i am in the final stages of an ELEVENTH STEP, because the literature plainly states that my own true will for myself, is but a glimpse of the will of the POWER that fuels my recovery. this is not a musing about the three wills, nor is it my journey if becoming the man i have always wanted to be, although those two concepts are deeply embedded in this whole idea of being freed to become that person.
there is a sh!t ton of talk about freedom, throughout the 12 STEP culture, in the fellowship that is my home, it is the basic tenet. once i was freed from active addiction, and as the trappings of being a using addict dropped away, i was left in a state quite unfamiliar to me. all of a sudden i was freed of my obsession with drugs and everything i needed to do get and stay high, just for right now. i had little freedom to have dreams or hopes, because i was so consumed by my need to use. i had little desire to become anything more than a successfully using addict. i did the bare minimum to get by and to foster the illusion that i was a member of society, in order to cover the darkness of the life i had created. as “free” as i thought the using life was, when i left that world, i discovered how time-consuming and soul crunching it was, and all of a sudden i was forced to start seeing the world for the first time, through the crisp clear lens of reality. i was lost and without any sort of direction, when i was finally freed, and had it not been for the external chains of the justice system, i would have been one of those who came, saw and said “no thank you!”
there is one thing that i am certain of, when it comes to the will of the POWER that fuels my recovery and that is, that i am supposed to stay clean, just for today. that knowledge drives my desire to stay clean and do what it takes to live a life where i can volunteer to love according to a spiritual principle or three. my mind has moved for seeking my next high, and on to higher and certainly the more noble pursuit of doing whatever it takes to stay clean today. across the course of time, even that has grown in to an automagic state that requires very little maintenance. yes maintaining my freedom does not take that much effort these days, i just do what i have always done, and allow myself to feel my way through to what i need to do today. when i consider the chain of days that i have been clean, been in recovery been an active participant in that program, i am amazed, because people like me, do not usually get that gift or even have the desire to glimpse getting that gift. what gift is that? the gift of FREEDOM from the chains of active addiction. i am now and will always be an addict BUT just for today i can enjoy and even revel in the freedom i have been given to live as something more.

∞ DT ∞