I have been clean for:
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ℜ freedom to choose ℑ

Posted: Tue, Oct 20, 2015 07:53:53 AM

or not to.
yes living life in the default lane is certainly easy, one never has to take any blame, accept any responsibility, and can chalk all that happens in one's life up to immutable predestination and fate. this is a topic i know very well, and how i lived before the day i finally got clean. even after that day, it was still quite a number of “just for todays,” before i finally accepted any responsibility for my life, and believed i was a victim of my addiction and fated to a miserable, boring and quite mundane existence, without my activity in thew whole wide world, getting and using.
today, i look back at what a shadow half-life i was living, and wonder what it was that finally made me step up, take a bit of responsibility for my life, and stop living life as a victim of circumstances. do not get me wrong, there are real victims in this world. those who have survived all sorts of unimaginable events and trauma in their lives, and this ids not meant to be a dig on them, nor to diminish the true nature of the consequences they suffered. truthfully, for me, playing the victim was about shifting the mess i had made, on to the shoulders of somebody, anybody else. when one lives in that mode for years on end, just as i had done, it was difficult for me to see, that i had the freedom to step beyond, much less make the choice to take some responsibility for me, myself and i and earn my next day clean. yes each day i have clean, is a day i have earned, due to my practice of working a program of recovery. even when the best i can do on any given day, is not to use, no matter what, that is another day clean that i have earned. when i look at my recovery as a chain of earned days, they become so much more valuable than when i see them as an entitlement. yes, i earned and deserve my seat in the rooms, but i CHOOSE to remain here, because of the consequences of that choice and the options i have been given.
<TAKE THREE>
okay, i get it, sometimes the winds of destiny blow and i need to just allow them to happen. this is third time, i have tried to get this entry done, and yet i am not ready to stop trying.
so where i was going with this, is that i am NOT a victim of addiction any longer. i do NOT need anyone to make choices for me. more importantly i CHOOSE to be clean today and i CHOOSE to take responsibility for my recovery today.

∞ DT ∞


Another Look

This day in older entries

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Tao Te Ching

☯ The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao ☯

The Tao Teh King, or The Tao and Its Characteristics
by Lao-Tse
Translated by James Legge

Book 1

1) Now arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen, hateful,
it may be said, to all creatures. Therefore they who have the Tao
do not like to employ them.