Some memes

of me today: i am more than my strengths and my weaknesses, i am a blend of both. that has been a long time coming, in my first set of steps in this fellowship, i felt as if i was a collection of defects that i had no power to change and that i would always have to react to them as i always did. i never said that quiet part out loud and carried it with me, into my next set of steps. i know now why i could accept that as fact and why i kept it on the down-low, but it took two more set of steps for the answer to become clear. that interpretation reinforced the lie that i carried for nearly six decades that i was too broken to reveal my whole self to anyone, save for a very trusted few. that lie haunted me throughout my life and on this side of it, i can see that it was a malign power that i built into a structure of denial and protection. i am finally became well enough to let it go and walk out into the sunlight of being the whole genuine self i was afraid of revealing. that self was not the five year old boy who believed he was so broken that the one person who he believed loved him unconditionally, could humiliate him throughout his life. i was broken so i deserved it.
this set of steps is all about changing how i treat myself. decades of denial and living the lie has left me with a need to be overly critical and disparaging of anything i do that is not perfect. i find no forgiveness withing and certainly very little benefit of a doubt because i am only human. i am sick and tired of treating myself less kindly than i treat my spouse, my friends, the men who call me their sponsor, my peers and the world in general. i have FAITH that when i complete this set of steps, i may not suddenly treat myself better, but i will have a path out of that house of pain.
today, as i prepare to go to work, i do not feel the weight of what is not upon me. i do feel the need to keep writing and at work tonight, that is what i will be doing to fill my idle time. i also am sure that today, the mish-mash of assets and deflects that make me the whole are not immutable facts. i may not be able to change them in any real sense, but i can learn how to choose how i respond to them. being my own judge, jury and executioner is a tiring role to play and as i learn to place them in the bit bucket, i will be able to be human and fail at times, succeed at others and bear no shame for not doing either, just for today.

∞ DT ∞