Alcoholics Anonymous Blog Video August 12 2014
Robin Williams Farewell. I can be funny, and everybody might laugh, and still I don't feel it. Seems like it should be okay to be me in my head at least, and still there is a big gap yawning, like an abyss. Everyone knows the brave face I put on to show to the world, and when people know me and see me, the brave face stops them asking questions I don't have an answer for. And yet when I see them, I can see their expectations and my brave face responds to their needs. I don't want to fall apart in front of them, and share my darkness. Of course I could be wrong.
The high and the low of life, emotional rollercoasters in all directions. I feel that burnout, and fill the black with anything I can get a hold of, people, places and things to fill the torment of being alone in the best of all company, except for myself. I feel like I know too much about the world, and I cannot set it right, I might fill my time in good works and taking care and cherishing everything around me. And still I can be lost at sea, still not sure who I am and I cannot roll back the clock to start from the beginning again. I can relate to the world, and I can love the world, and still I don't know how to love myself enough to sit still and be able to see the beautiful world of now.
It takes a very long time to get off the rollercoasters of emotional ups and downs, because they are familiar. We relate to every emotional high and low, we may relate to it and yet we cannot feel it. It takes time to repair our emotional and spiritual life, there are no quick fixes. And as we get older, time to slow down and feel the emotional truth of now, we can be very impatient because time is running out. We can lurch at fulfilment that others may share, the inside job really does take whatever time it takes. And those moments of complete serenity are elusive to all mankind, tormented and driven mad by the day to day. Too much news, too much information driving our ideals of a perfect life.
The madness of trying to keep on doing what we used to do, as if that were the answer. I am not the man I used to be, and it's hard enough to be the man I am today. Unless of course I can let it all go and keep on going one day at a time. Are you, you still hoping to see the man I used to be? I can never be that man again, and yet my brave face, you will see that again and again because that is what you want. You get what you want and I am empty in the dark.
It took me a long time in recovery, and those fortunate that I heard the most hurtful words some years before from a doctor: "you will never be that man again, and you will never give service like you did before." It was a company doctor telling me that I would never be allowed to go back to work to do the job I had become so successful at doing in the world. And of course my denial was great, the brave face said you can, and surrendering to the truth many years later, I knew I could not be that man again. People talk of acceptance, and rarely get to experience it. The acceptance of starting over one day at a time. And even then we can still desire the infamy of the broken man we were back then in the day.
People have every capacity within when young. And then it seems humanity stretches each and every one of us in all directions. Some people quit when they've had enough and quite rightly. Some of us cannot stop and keep going beyond safe limits and into self-destruction. And going beyond safe limits for whatever reason usually involves self-destruction and destructive outcomes for all around. And still we put them on a pedestal, "the superhuman," and they meet our expectations until oblivion calls them to task.
I am lucky to be alive, no longer able or willing to meet the expectations of the man I used to be. And the great happiness which can be experienced in the moment of now, it is equal to every destructive moment of the past. And I have the good fortune to be able to see, to learn to be myself just for today. And if my brave face comes on to plague my present moment I need beware and ask for help. We will need time to rest, we all need time to recuperate so we can keep on learning. And it can be difficult when a world expects we need keep doing the same things over and over again for them, and there is nothing in that repetition for us. I am happy to be an ordinary man, it's quite extraordinary one day at a time.
Step Eight Reading 12 And 12
Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,
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