Some memes

to looking at myself as honestly and completely as possible, on a daily basis through my 10th STEP inventory and through each and every 4th STEP i write. the notion of looking at myself was evident this morning as my peers shared about one of our peers who just could not get this program and ended-up dead of an overdose. one of the things they did for me, was to get me to look at where i still believed i was a victim. in early recovery i allowed myself to play victim to addiction, blaming addiction for all that was wrong in my life and was more than a bit disconcerted that abstinence and membership did not disabuse of that idea. as long as i was a victim, i could take minimal responsibility for what i did, after all what would one expect, i was an addict. time and again, that played a heavy theme in what i was trying to accomplish and kept me from moving forward, by allowing myself the freedom to recover responsibly and deliberately. looking back at those days, i am grateful that i finally saw that playing the victim was never going to serve me well. it took until my last 4th STEP to remove the last traces of being a victim from my conscious mind and become comfortable with how i was then and who i could be, once i let go. a quarter of a century after my clean date, i was finally breaking free from the shackles of my past.
breaking free, allows me to become someone i always fronted being, self-confident, genuine and worthy of respect, my own and that of others. it was no magic bullet, but it did contribute to the not so secret sauce that keeps me clean, day-in and day-out. there are time i want to beat myself up for not looking at that last nasty bit through several inventories, but today, is not one of those times. my life is far too precious today, to allow myself to wallow in self-pity and remorse of what once was. i can move forward into the light of my ongoing recovery and be grateful that there are addicts in my life, who through what they share and behave, can allow me to see myself through a different lens and make the course corrections to continue my journey into wherever i happen to be going, just for today.

∞ DT ∞