Being Honest With Yourself

Today is Thursday April Eighth Two Thousand Ten. For the last two days I have received phone messages that are just plain nasty. They must be from some bill collector and man those guys can be insulting. They funny thing is that yesterday the guy had a spanish accent and then today he had an indian accent but they both told me to call someone with an american name. They also left a message on my work voicemail which is a no-no but its not like they ever get busted for doing it. I currently have two outstanding bills that I need to pay and I plan on paying them off sometime this summer. I have paid off about seventy percent of my outstanding debt so far and I fee pretty good about that. I was talking to someone in the program who was self employed for a long time and neglected to pay taxes for the last four or five years before he got sober. He has been ignoring letters from the IRS and one day he went to his bank and all the money was removed. I guess the IRS had enough and went after whatever they could. I think he owes around a hundred grand in back taxes and I don't know how they are ever going to recover that cash.

Dealing with things in a timely manner has never been my strong suit but I am getting better at it. With my next paycheck I plan to get one account current and then in a few months finally tackle that outstanding credit card debt. There is always the chance they will track me down and corner me and I will have to deal with it sooner but I am ok with that. Its not like I don't owe them money or anything like that, I've just been a dickhead about it. How would I like it if someone owed me cash for a couple years ? It would drive me crazy and I would try and call them all the time as well. I just know that its going to feel great once I pay everything off and don't have to always check the phone number before I pick up a call.

Changing habits is a big part of my sober living. I guess the first habit I changed is not to use drugs and alcohol. One for me. The second is getting into the habit of being honest about everything. Being honest with other people and to myself so that I can grow into something I am proud of. I used to lie to others all the time whether it was a wild story or just something simple. Worst of all I would lie to myself, telling myself that I would change tomorrow or at the end of the week. When it came time to act on that change I would find some excuse to why I couldn't do what I had promised myself I would. I love the term "Action in the key" because without action nothing ever gets done. Very rarely does something happen without you having to work at it and it feels great to achieve something you didn't think was possible. I have a couple of those achievements in my pocket and many more are out there.

I never thought that I could stay sober for more than a few weeks. Drinking was such a part of my daily life I couldn't imagine life without it. What would I do with myself if I wasn't drinking all the time ? I never thought that I would like the feeling that sobriety gives me, the energy, the optimism. For me, that was the real secret of staying sober, the feeling of extended sobriety and the awareness that comes with it. I thought to myself that I would indeed get off the heroin because that was clearly the problem and if I was able to not drink for a few months then great. I would give AA a chance and see if I could maintain my sobriety, after all I could always drink by myself because I was really good at that. I feel like what I have learned in AA has ruined drinking for me and thats a good thing. I couldn't start drinking again and maintain my attendance in meetings. I would not be able to look everyone in the eye and lie to them. I care about and respect the program too much to do that now. If I every start drinking again there is no fucking way I would attend meetings.

Every time I see my mother she asks me three things: are you smoking, are you drinking, are you doing drugs ? I guess she is allowed to as I did cause her great pain but it sucks to be questioned like that all the time. Only once did I tell her that I had quit everything and went back to using but evidently she has a good memory of that. I tried to explain to her that if I stop talking about AA then she should worry but that didn't seem to do any good. She just has no understanding of what my drinking and drug use was like and I don't really want to explain it to her in messy detail. I've told my father just about everything and that was enough for me I guess. Maybe I will at some point but I don't think she needs to hear all about the abuse that her son did for twenty years. I am afraid it will break her heart. Thats another reason why I have not spoken to her about my thoughts of offing myself either. I am afraid of what her reaction may be so for now I will just continue to answer her three questions in the negative.

I just noticed that I have another "follower" of my blog. Hi there, thanks for reading this shit, I appreciate it. In case it isnt obvious this blog is a stream of conciousness, I just write what comes to me without any outline or plans. I spend the first thirty minutes at work writing and this is what my brain belches out. Believe it or not, I have had little formal training as a writer ! Can't you tell ? In seriousness I enjoy writing down my thoughts and concerns on a daily basis and I always feel better afterwards. I may write a book after I have been sober for five years and this blog may be the foundation for that. I know there are plenty of books out there about drinking and drug use but I think I have some good things to say about it and if I am able to be sober for five years then I am pretty fucking good at it and perhaps people can learn from what I have experienced. Thanks to the interwebs its much easier to get a book published and I have already found some people who want to help me with it which is awesome. Anyway, thanks for reading and I will try to stay sober for one more day.