30 Days Clean!!

I got up at a meeting last night when the member handing out key tags for clean time called for anyone taking thirty days clean.  As everyone cheered, I finally relaxed and allowed myself to feel excitement over my achievement.

I was just told, to be gentle on myself, thirty days clean is a big deal.  I find I am needing to be given permission to feel these days.  This is not my first kick at the can, not my first ride at the rodeo.  I have taken thirty days clean before.... several times.

 Last night started out as a reminder of all my previous failed attempts.  Story of my life.  I finish nothing I start.  However as the meeting progressed I began to start to turn my mind around at how I looked at my thirty days of sobriety.

My glass can be half full or half empty.

I keep seeing meme's(?)  those pictures with sayings on Facebook, I don't know what they are called, but whatever... I keep seeing motivational quotes about the difference between a master and a beginner is that the master has more failed attempts then the beginner has ever tried.  ....Thats me.

Queen of failed attempts.

Yet when I look at it from the angle of all the experience I have now at understanding deeply my patterns.  I understand without a shadow of a doubt how the relapse pattern gets started and how it plays out.  I know myself pretty well now from one too many bad decisions.

And to be honest I now can see the similarities between me and the junkie on the street eating out of a dumpster.  I don't have to force myself there anymore to prove I deserve a seat in a Narcotics anonymous meeting.  I am a drug addict in recovery,  a drug addict,  I indeed am.

Why?

 Because I simply refuse to feel my feelings and deal with life on life's terms.

I would rather check out of life and live on the streets some days then have to put in another minute playing nice with a corrupt society of manipulative people willing to stomp on you to make another buck.   I would rather eat out of a dumpster some days then to have to face my abusive past and finally walk through those feelings of pain before I can get better and move on.  I would rather be high and live in my fantasy world then work on building my dreams in a reality that sometimes takes way to much work.

Now saying that, I must admit, at thirty days clean is a bit of a contradiction to the way my mind normally works.    I do check out of life when I don't get my way.  I am a bit of a spoiled rotten brat who hasn't grown up yet.  But I have also created an amazing life for myself that I truly love.  I don't see the world as that harsh on a good day, I love life and the way it works, corruption and all.  I have a tremendously exciting higher power that makes life a huge game of fun for me.

Just today however with the understanding that I can never again throw a drug related temper tantrum and check out of reality is making it hard for me to see the beauty in life at this moment.  For the first time in my years on this earth I am removing the rose colored glasses and seeing life for what it really is, shadows and all.  I am feeling all my feelings, not just the fluffy light ones.  And I am accepting my past for the truth of what it was and the players involved for the truth of their parts in it.

.... And it sux.  Life is not all roses and butterflies.

This is a harsh new understanding for me.  It's not that I didn't know there were injustices in the world.  Just that when an injustice happened to me, I was so, so, so good at keeping the mask of pleasantness plastered to my face that the feelings and actions involved with the injustice were swiftly brushed under the carpet of my heart and on with my life I moved.

Well I have this amazingly wonderful psychologist whom I see on a weekly basis, who has effectively ripped up my fucking carpet when I momentarily left the room and now all the bugs that have been feeding off my festering pile of shit under the rug are pouring out into the room of my heart and I am a bloody mess trying to clean everything up.

My best friend has said it for years and years upon years.... deal with your shit.  And for years and years and years upon years, I ignored her.

So at thirty days clean I am learning a new way of dealing with my feelings and life's situations.  At a time in my life where I am being faced with all and I mean every single one of my past trauma's, I cannot get loaded.

I cant have a 'drink' to take the edge off the hard truth I just learned about someone I love.  I cannot smoke a joint to ease the pain of having to call my boss to find out if I still have a job.  I cannot go hit up a club to dance off the fear of getting to old to make the changes I need to make in order to become the person I wanted to be when I made my lifes wish list at 16.

Hahaha... reading that above paragraph to proof it, makes me realize how ridiculous it sounds to even cope with life that way in the first place.  But its the truth of how I dealt with shit and well my life apparently reflects that today.

Learning a new way to live isn't the hard part.  Its facing the shit, that's the hard part.  Its standing in the room of my heart, looking at the mess I have allowed it to become and knowing I am responsible for it all, that's the hardest part.

So thirty days clean for me today is a big fucking deal.

One foot in front of the other, right?  and focused on ... JUST FOR TODAY!!