Some memes

reality and the truth pose no real risk to me today. while it is quite true that my relationship with honesty and reality were far from healthy when i was using, heck even before i used for the first time, i was a very bad liar. what i did get very skilled at was telling just enough of any truth to make others believe what i wanted them to believe. manipulation and playing roles were part of who i became as i grew up. at first they were parts and pieces of a childhood game of hiding my “broken” self from the world around me. that game became a life style that i polished into perfection over the course of my active addiction. denial of reality, blame shifting and a victim mentality took hold, so that when i entered the rooms, by connection with reality was tenuous at best. all i desired when i got clean, was an easy and soft path out of the justice system. what i got was so far from my wildest dreams that i often wonder how the hell did i get to where i am today! my deepest held belief when i walked into the rooms was that IF anyone saw who i was, i wold be rejected, humiliated and abused, so having a set of crusty looks, manipulative behaviors and brutal sarcasm in my bag of tricks was a requirement not an option.
looking back at those days and the person i once was, i can see that what i thought and saw as the real world was an illusion i used to comfort and shield myself. when i finally woke up and admitted to my innermost self that i was an addict and i had a desire to be something more, the path of recovery became something that i believed might work for me, if only … these days i know that a single event in my childhood changed me forever and created the ecosystem of my “broken” self that required all the trappings i added to that bag of tricks.
i still have that bag of tricks at the ready, although the dust is rather thick as i have not had to open it up for quite some time. recovery has given me the ways and means to explode the myth of my “broken” self and see that under all the personas i developed, there was a decent, kind, loving and worthy person waiting to be seen. knowing in my heart of hearts that i have worth and value to those in my life is only the start of embracing who i am, in real-time, without modifiers or obfuscation. i can walk with my head held high and revel in the assets and attributes i once believed i had to hide from myself and the world around me. i do not need to tell myself stories about what is and i certainly do not need to spin yarns of what i was, to boost my self-esteem and self-worth.
today, as i listened to the void, what i heard was that even if the truth or reality about who i am and how i behave is not complimentary, i need not worry, as i am doing the best i can with what i have today. some days i am better than i think i am and i am never worse than anyone else. i deserve the respect i have not felt worth of giving myself. it is so easy to slip into the judge, jury and executioner, when i take a misstep. what i am learning in this set of steps is that the judge is mostly wrong, the jury is biased and the executioner is killing the wrong person. today, i can walk the path of recovery and allow my humanness to show, as perfection will never be anything i will be able to achieve. that lie is dead and long live the truth.

∞ DT ∞