In my addiction I was tormented by the short-comings of my present. In my recovery I became haunted by the memories of my past. Sometimes I am haunted by nostalgic longings for what I once possessed and the extremes I was able to endure. More often however my memories are of my past shame and failures as an addict, as a human being. These shameful recollections are difficult to bear and it is their constant pestering presence which holds the times I am closest to going back out. I have always felt a great deal of shame in regards to situations, most out of my control; perhaps that is simply another of the curses of addiction. I used to feel the shame and the hurt and would numb these feelings, crush them with chemical bliss and bury them deep within my psyche. When it came to be that I chose recovery as my path through the rest of my life I began having to deal directly with these things I had been pushing down for so long. As I pulled one set of nerve endings out from deep within my skin, another set would come to rise: a set which had been successfully dis-acknowledged so that I wasn't even sure if the things I was feeling so terribly about had ever come to pass or if it was just my mind playing jest. With a great deal of meditation on the subject I came to conclude that these 'unknown events' had all truly been and I had simply forgotten them. They had been overwritten by fresher pains and more present troubles to fret.
When I passaged from treatment back into common society I assumed that I had come far enough along, in dealing with these past traumas, that I need not be troubled by them further, unless it was so that I chose. My assumptions proved far from reality. Although need not I fret by day, it was by night these terrors would come to pass. Anytime my mind had a moment to itself it was powerless against the riptide of recollection. Every night my mind valiantly fought sleep from my bed and left me weak and meager in the morning to go to work. I often worked a week on little more than ten hours sleep. It was this corrosion of my faculties which brought me closest to relapse. I knew not how to cope with my demons then. A year went by in my struggle before I came to accept that this is how it would have to be; and I was okay with that, as even physically and mentally enervated: life was better on the ins of sobriety. During the year following my come-to-terms I would discover a cruelly efficient tactic for dealing with my goblins of mind.
The tactic is simple, I began to identify what it was that I was so ashamed of in my past and I would replace it with something I was not ashamed of in my present. Certain songs I would hear brought back memories of terrible times and so I forced myself to listen to these songs as I was with the friends of my recovery. It surely was difficult. I could barely focus on the present for haunt of goblin's screams within confines of cerebrum. But as I did this more and more the scales slowly tipped. Now these songs, being played in my presence, only cause a slight and distant squeal of ages gone past. There were girls I had in my life whom I treated not as I wish I would have; there is nothing that can be done to rectify this past mistake, but it can easily be overwritten by treating present girls how I wish to have valued the others. All things in life are available to be redone better than before, having learned the lessons of the past, and all things may be redone as many times as needed. No limit caps my life, no limit caps my recovery. So long as I draw breath I shall continue to replace instances of that which does not please me with instances of that which does, and it is through this tactic that I shall exercise perfection within my life. For perfection is not to be flawless, yet to be constantly eliminating flaws.
~CCH2015
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