Day 801
Today begins my ninth one-hundred-day season of sobriety. Actually, today is the first day — and only day — after the end of my eighth one-hundred-day season. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how the second day is going.
Wanna know my secret for long sobriety? If this is your first day of recovery, you might. If you are in the tenth day of your tenth year of sobriety, then you probably know that there are no secrets, except those still being kept and lied about by those of us in recovery and those that need to be in recovery.
The ability to recover from sexual addiction seems to be directly tied to one's ability NOT to have secrets. That means a previously unimagined level of honesty with everyone, and a willingness to share your darkest thoughts and humiliating confessions with a sponsor and fellow people in recovery.
One of the reasons I've always thought I was special — when I wasn't thinking about all the wicked things I was doing — was that I was my best friend, my confidant, my own Holy Grail of secrets tightly held. No one could understand me because I was special, or because I was special, I didn't need anyone to understand me.
Does anyone want to call 'bullshit' on any of that?
How is it possible that I thought myself destined for greatness that would be thrust upon me, while simultaneously knowing I could never earn significance. Afterall I was, well, I was the scum of the earth between my ears and subject to deep, dark acting out in the depths of my isolation.
The only secret in recovery is to blow up one's own secrets. I do not tell everyone everything about me; I have to use some uncommon common sense to avoid hurting or triggering others unnecessarily. But the program provides me a guide and a safe place to learn the skills it takes to reach out to the right people when reaching is needed. It gives me a place to admit my defects to people who have walked the same road, people that can be gentle, and teach me to be gentle with myself.
Honesty is the secret sauce for no secrets.
–JR
Once I had a secret love
That lived within the heart of me
All too soon my secret love
Became impatient to be free
–Slim Whitman, “Secret Love"
Comments