An ex-addict with Manners.

My Internal thoughts on Recovery... and People...

Why is it that recovering addicts, who work a programme, still don't have the manners needed to sustain a healthy relationship with life? Being a young, single, independent girl in recovery I have issues when doors are slammed in my face.

I practice kindness and manners naturally. I find it difficult to fit in with grumpy recovering addicts who extend the gracious welcome needed for unity, in brew-making and general conversation; but do not practice general everyday manners as they rocket through life. In every walk of life I hold doors open for people, I smile at strangers; but the recovery programme identifies this as having a 'lack of boundaries' with people. So what are you asking me to do? Feel uncomfortable as I shun people, close my good nature off, in favour of irreversible indecency and thoughtlessness for the accrual of self-esteem and boundaries? Because once I begin the practice of dis-using my manners, it becomes an irreversible trait.

I question: am I attracting unwanted attention, particularly from males? Am I dealing with poorly people and this is why I need my boundaries? I recognise the feeling of lack of self-worth when I smile at a stranger, often male, in the street. I smile, they smile, I feel negative about the action.

So here I stand: Experiencing an internal quarrel with myself as I struggle through the early world of recovery; simultaneously trying to open up and yet close down, focusing on boundaries whilst reaching out and telling the group about my most personal issues and problems about how I think, what I'm feeling, how recovery is going, personal goals and struggles. I feel an unobstructed freedom to be as creative as I like... but I can't shake the feeling that from my point of view, and this may be an inaccurate perception, that there is a fridgidness within the common universal consciousness of a particular meeting I frequent now and then. It is life-saving stuff, to share openly and honestly within an NA meeting, however I am caught between the purpose and practiced Traditions of unity, and feeling, in a normal meeting, I am being self-seeking to cry about my addiction. I asked to be an addict.

I have compassion for every soul who has ever had an addiction. Although we made the choice, we are not responsible for the disease. But seriously...

HOLD THE DOOR OPEN FOR OTHERS...