Self Acceptance

Self acceptance.  ugh.  I had no idea the concept was gonna be this hard to digest.

This is where I am at in my recovery today, self acceptance.  What am I recovering?  My second sponsor would always ask me that question when I would use the term recovery.  It seems fitting today to remind myself of what I am recovering to be able to accept my full self.

I have peeled a new layer of my onion and what I used to be recovering is not so anymore.  Before I was recovering a drug free me.  I was reaching into the depth of my psyche to recover the whole of me that didn't use dope.  I did succeed on that venture.

.... For about 18 months then I got loaded again.  As I look deeper and ask myself again what is it I am recovering I come up with a different answer.

I am recovering my feelings.

I shut my feelings off a very long time ago.  I used many forms to suppress and manipulate how I felt. In my adult years I mastered and manufactured my feelings to fit my desires and the situations at hand.  I got so good at it that I completely and fully dissociated from all my feelings.

After a year of being clean it was getting harder to keep that disconnection from my feelings without

the use of drugs.  So here I am back in early drug recovery and getting more honest with my onion layers.  I am recovery the full use and natural expression of my feelings.

And it sux.

 So how does self acceptance fit into this?  I actually have no idea yet.  I didn't intend to include the what am I recovering part.  So I guess we are gonna find out together.

I am struggling hard with self acceptance.  I realized recently that I didn't fully accept I was an addict in the past four years of frequenting the meetings of narcotic anonymous.  I am from the mind set of what we label ourselves we become.  I also believe our speech affirms our labels and to say daily in public that 'I am an addict' actually perpetuated the problem for me.

Those beliefs keep landing me in drug relapse.

Its not that I have to gt rid of the beliefs entirely but what I do need to understand now is that before I can paint a new reality for myself I need to work through the challenge, the lesson first.  I am always quick to jump to the end of the road with out having walked the path.  I am the hare in the tortoise story, always rushing to be the first one across the finish line having learned nothing along the way.

To move away from my existence as an addict I first have to get real about the fact that I am an addict in the first place.  I cannot put drugs into my system without it ending very badly for myself and my life.  I have had three major relapses since coming into the N.A. fellowship, I think it is safe to say that I have done enough research to safely say I cannot use dope in any form and stop at just one.

I am officially accepting I am a drug addict.

And my heart is crushed.

To admit to myself that I have a serious personality defect like this or a disease cursing through my spirit, or the mind corrupted by addiction,  is to admit I am damaged.  I am broken.  My sadness these past few days has been all inclusive.  Tears flow constantly.

I am accepting I am an addict.  I am addicted to anything that will kill my feelings or manipulate them in a way that best suits me.  I am addicted to numbing out my spirit and comfortable living in a shell of a body.  For the past thirty years I have grown fond of a slow self induced death.  I am addicted to all things that will slowly suck the life force out of me.

There is an energy within me that wants me dead.  And this is why I am so sad today.  To accept that I am an addict is to accept that I have taken part in the slow killing of my own body.  I have a part in raping my soul.  I have a part in torturing my intuition, beating up my inner goddess.   To accept is to take responsibility for my part in my destructive behaviors inflicted on my own self.

Self acceptance is rough personal business.

Awareness is key.  I always tell myself this.  Following behind awareness is acceptance.  I see now that is the truly hardest step to take.  Becoming aware is sickening and sometimes to hard to chew and this is where I have chosen denial in the past.  But today I am working through the awareness into acceptance.

I have to now move into action.  I have not over eaten all week.  I have worked so fucking hard on my obsessive thoughts around sex and all thing romantically involved and the person I am obsessed with.  I have not used any drugs.  This has been my action.  This is the work that is solidifying the acceptance.  This is my way of showing myself that I am truly beginning to accept I am an addict and there by actually proving that I am not wrong in this awareness..... because its brutal fucking hard to change the way you have thought and behaved for thirty fucking years!!

But the rewards are instant.

The result of Awareness, acceptance and action.....OMG.  Feelings!!  And lots of the little buggers.  They are popping up everywhere.  Tears.  Giggles. Happy. Sad,  Angry.  Frustrated. Burning desire. Excitement. Disgust.  Guilt. Shame. Defeat.  Hope. Joy. Peace.  Serenity.   Man the list is endless.  And I cycle through them as quickly as I can write them.  To someone who has felt them their whole lives I wonder if I look a bit nuts right now, but to me who has never allowed them to flow... its kinda amazing and exciting, albeit scary and hard as fuck to just sit with them.  But I cannot even begin to describe the relief..... like finally getting to pee after holding your bladder until almost explosion.

So self acceptance i can now see is the first step in moving away from labeling myself an addict.  Because it is only through shedding light on the shadow can we then remove it entirely.  I am now a recovering addict.

I want to say that's the end of my self acceptance but its not.  Now I have to face one very strong lady Vixen who has put a block on all things Love and one really pissed off inner child.  One affliction at a time though.  I am gonna take the addict acceptance to my heart first and begin to move into a life where I don't feel the need to control my every waking emotion.

 Baby steps.... says the tortuous.