Blog entry for:

to become a part of the fellowship that has shown me a new manner of living.back in the day, i was alone, in fact, at the end of active addiction i was glad to be alone for lots of reasons. the less people i had in my life, i reasoned, the less chances of getting burned or hurt. as weak and feeble as that sounds, that was my life in a nutshell, few friends, lots of acquaintances and never, ever letting anyone get close enough to me to do any sort of damage. the saddest fact of all, is that i saw no harm in living in that manner and absolutely nothing wrong. by isolating i was not only protecting myself but lessening the damage i could inflict on others. even in my failed marriage, i withheld all that i could from my ex-wife and once again rationalized it away with the magic wand of self-preservation. decades of behavior are difficult to change and transferring thew momentum to a direction 180- degrees out, was a task i never believed i could accomplish and it is still ongoing today. so it goes, life in recovery is certainly better than life alone. before i get down and dirty:

Larry Q,
I am glad you keep coming back.
3 years is awesome, my friend! CONGRATS!

being a ‘part’ of something was never what i bargained for, back in the day. i quickly saw what a fishbowl the fellowship could be and all the petty dramas that were generated on a weekly basis. holding back, i thought i could ‘safely’ recover, make a few friends and for the most part leave my peers behind ➪ after all, that was what i knew, was comfortable with and certain that worked for me. for a while, quite a while, even after becoming a member it did work for me. as i worked steps, however, it worked less and less and finally became a behavior i desired to have changed.
this set of steps has changed a whole lot about how i see myself and what my desires really are; instead of being separate, i long to be a part of something more. instead of preaching what YOU need to do, i wish to share what i did and the path i see before me. i was certainly a man before coming to the fellowship, but i was not much of a person and certainly not a joiner, all the groups i was a part of, was the result of being dragged along by someone else. one might even say, my membership in this fellowship was the result of being dragged in by my short hairs, but my longevity in the fellowship comes from a desire to belong somewhere, to be part of something and to have some sort of connection with the humans that populate the world around me. i am growing, but instead of leaving those who were here for me, back in the day, behind, i am expanding that circle and bringing them along for this ride.
one of the greatest gifts i have been given is to see myself through the eyes of who i am and less and less through the eyes of who i think or thought i was. when i strip away the façades and layers of protection, i can be someone who can be trusted to do the next right thing, most of the time.i do not PRACTICE at applying spiritual principles, i just do and often fail to do them as well as i could, that is just life in the big city. more and more i want to be free from my self-imposed prison of isolation and join the rest of the human race. the steps, my predecessors and peers, and my willingness allows me to fulfill that vision, just for today. so once m,ore dear friends, into the breech!

∞ DT ∞