My perception of myself and the world around me can be shaped by memories of my past realities. My expectations whether realistic or not can have self fulfilling effects. If I perceive myself as not being deserving of the attention, love, and respect of another, I will most likely draw people into my life who will bring me just what I expect, nothing. If I perceive myself to be a worthless A..hole, I will most likely find myself in a dysfunctional relationship, with some other worthless A..hole, pissed off and wondering why I keep drawing these types of people into my life. I could spend a lot of time blaming other people, places, and things for the problems that I've had in life and any negative attributes that I've developed as a result of those problems. Once I was done assigning the blame, I'd still have all the same crap going on. I've admitted that I'm an addict, that I'm powerless over my addictions, and that my life has been filled with both inner and outer turmoil, to this day it still has a degree of unmanageability in it. I have accepted the fact that addiction is a disease, not just a temporary flaw in my character. I have aquired another sponsor and started working the steps again. I attend and share in many meetings. I have been of service to the fellowship, and on rare occasions I even pray to my higher power. But I have to be very careful with this admittance and acceptance. I could very easily use this disease as false justification to move toward some twisted behaviors, even without the use of drugs. I'm pretty sure that I could live in these rooms and the rooms of another fellowship day in and day out. Talk the talk, act like I'm walking the walk, aquire and manipulate a sponsor, learn, but not live the steps and traditions, become a trusted servant, not go back to using mind or mood altering substances, even memorize the literature. Then I could come to meetings and tell you over and over and over again, what a lying, cheating, stealing, violent, foul mouthed, perverted, low life, piece of pond scum, I was in active addiction. Whether I was or wasn't any of those things is beside the point. I would prefer to put all that sick crap in the rear view mirror, drive off and never look back. I have no desire to live in the past. I know better than to try and forget where I came from, but I'd like to forgive myself and move on to a better way of life. If I were to stir all that old crap back up every few days, I might find myself living it again even without drugs. I would hope that I wouldn't, but anything is possible. I suppose it would even be possible to find myself with years of clean time behind me, misrepresenting the program of NA. I could become a shark circling from room to room looking for newcomers to prey on, using cliches', memorized literature, and other peoples stories, all rolled up into this excellent sounding message of hope and freedom as bait for my next 13th step victim. I could start getting loaded again using NA as nothing more than a diversionary symbol of my false sobriety, I could misappropriate NA funds. I don't know which would be the worst case scenario, all could have the eventual outcome, if acted out, of stopping the message from reaching the addict who still suffers. For today, I'm going to try and see a positive vision in front of me, instead of the negative history behind me. I can't try out new ideas or activities, living in the past. I'm making it through today, both clean and happy, I couldn't do that in the past. I've spent time with other recovering addicts, I've slept good at night, and I don't have much to feel guilty about. For today it really doesn't need to get much better than that. 

Tags: Reflective