Day 394
I still have trouble believing that I've been so different from my friends and family for so many years. I've always had the perception that I thought about things my friends did not, and I've perpetually felt that I needed to hide my dark thoughts because I would alienate myself even further from people important to me. Yet, I never made a connection between those two conflicting realities.
But even now, after a year of sobriety and working the program as honestly and persistently as I know how, I'm not sure I know who I am. There is still so much of the 'me' that I crafted for decades that I don't know what I can trust.
If the 'only' change is that I'm no longer feeding or freeing my addiction, is that the new me? I know I'm an addict, but that does not make my addiction the real me, not the only me. Hiding has been such a part of my life for so long, and I feel certain that in the absence of the acting-out and the entrapments there must be more to discover than I've ever been able to do because of all the energy invested in hiding my dirty little secrets from everyone.
So, patience, daily determination, repeated releasing to my Higher Power... all these things are now my life. Will the real me emerge from this process, or am I now just a processor, replacing my addiction with a new — albeit healthier — obsession?
I am eager to learn, but not in a hurry.
–JR
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