47 Years Looking for the Quick Fix

I've been a little shaken this week. The falling-out with my sponsor shook me up. He had become a good friend over the past year, and I may have lost the friendship, along with the disillusionment as a sponsor.

I feel vulnerable and at-risk without a sponsor. I know I need to get a new sponsor, and I know four or five guys I'm thinking of approaching. I recognize that if it doesn't work out, I just get someone else, no big deal. But a part of me still is the Rugged Individualist, wanting to do it all myself, I don't need or want a sponsor. And I don't trust my own judgment now, and fearful I'll ask the "wrong" person.

This "shaken" feeling has been reinforced by seeing my own character defects in my sponsor. The same hubris, cockiness, and blindness to my own shortcomings, that I was particularly aiming at my wife.

And just in case that wasn't enough, my meeting with my shrink laid it out quite plainly. I went there looking for answers to my son's situation -- let's face it, I wanted ammo to get my way. Instead, the session ended up highlighting what my responsibilities are as a father, many of which I've been faking, making excuses, taking shortcuts. Nothing earthshaking, nothing that isn't as plain as the nose on my face: I have no control over my wife or what she does with my son. I am not in sole control of his schedule. When my son is with me, he needs me to be consistent aqnd patient. His behavior will respond to mine. If I want him to pick up his toys, I have to pick up my own toys. No strategic weapons for total victory here. Very simply: Phil, you know what you have to do, so do it!

And you know what bugs me the most? That I can recognize these attitudes and my behavior (more accurately procrastination) as the same traps I've always fallen into. If I don't have assurance that everything will be perfect, completely under my control, then I try to avoid it altogether.

I know what it takes. "A day at a time" means I have a responsibility to others, to God, and above all to myself to make the most of today. I know now that epochal, radical alteration of my life does not happen in an afternoon. I've spent 47 years looking for the quick fix. It's still easy for me to be impatient and discouraged. I haven't yet internalized that incremental effort and incremental change add up to big things.

So, all in all, I guess, this week has been a gentle nudge for me from HP. I've been a bit slack in putting recovery into practice in my life every day. It's not that I seem to be in immediate danger of deciding to get drunk today. It's more that I feel kind of fuzzy around the edges. It's hard for me to concentrate enough to write this, to identify and articulate feelings and thoughts. Not sharp, not focused -- kind of fuzzy.

I'm truly grateful for the experience, strength and hope I find in others' blogs. For instance, just in the past few days, Pepa, Scott, Blue, Dave, Trudge, and Lash have said things that expressed my own thoughts and feelings, so much better than I can myself. And this is just a sample, I could point to many others. I'm truly grateful, too, for the remarkable joy, pain, courage and growth of some bloggers in their first days of recovery, such as Steph, Grace, and Jane. Their journeys inspire me, and remind me how much I want, and believe I can have, the continuous renewal that a spiritually-centered recovery offers. The journeys of the "oldtimers" show me the result of that continuous renewal, and the good life that I want, and that I believe I can have.

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Heard at last night's meeting: "Recovery is not for those who want it, nor for those who need it. It's for those who work it."