This is a powerful but painful post to read and share on.

I started on my path of recovery by looking at my Adult Survivor Issues.

Along the way I have seen that some of the other events of my life, from both civilian and military life, have left the scars of trauma on me. Scars that needed healing.

When the memories, the pain and the shame began to emerge I knocked the back down with booze and painkillers.

I worked like a mad man, not just to be able to buy all the toys I could so I would look OK on the outside (to prevent any from thinking there was anything wrong with the inside) and to try to fill the role of “Provider”, which was what I thought I was supposed to be, but to avoid seeing the truth of myself and feeling anything I did not want to see.

When anything threatened to make me feel the things I ran from I raged, stomped, lied and, when necessary, ran.

But no matter how hard I ran, I could not run from myself. Things kept triggering my memories. The dreams would not go away. The feelings kept resurfacing.

I tried hard to put out the pain that has become the fire that forged my soul.

Eventually I knew I had to act or die.

I tried talking with counselors. Hell I’d been seeing them since I was 13!

But I could not trust any of them, how could I? I had never learned to trust.

Then I met others who were like me.

I did not need to hide my secrets from them. They openly spoke of My secrets because they were Their secrets! I did not need to hide my pain or my shame.

They already saw it and shared it.

As I began to open up about my truths I could eventually talk of my drinking, my drugging and all the other screwed up things I was doing to avoid being who God had created me to be.

Today, 16 years latter, I am still recovering from it.

I still have nightmares, flash backs, painful memories, angry feelings, moments of doubt and fear. I still have difficulty trusting God and other humans.

But I have come so far!

I can laugh, cry, love and be loved more fully than I ever thought possible.

When a flash back comes today it lasts only a little while and does not completely dominate my mind, body and spirit. They last only a short while and I am able to function again in minutes, maybe hours latter and am able to ‘process’ the flash back so that I am able to accept what happened TO ME (and no longer disassociate from it).

I am better able to accept the things that I did (and did not do) while trying to deal with this reality in my life (although I am still struggling with some regrets over what I did not do and, at times, still often see myself as a failure).

I also see that I chose this life of recovery, of sobriety. I chose not to stay a victim, a drunk, and a drug abuser.

I chose to stop using people, places and things to try to fix me.

I know now these were brave choices, choices worth feeling honest pride in.

I also see when I chose not to become a perpetrator, an abuser, as my father had been. I know now that there was a moral choice I made, and the fact that I could feel that humanity, speaks of the greater good within me. There is good within me.

God does dwell within my heart.

I still feel the pull of depression, the bite of regret, the emptiness of a childhood lost and many other losses.

And I know all too well how easy it is to sink back into that abyss.

I know as well that if I slip into that abyss, waiting for me is a drink, a bottle of painkillers and probably many other hooks to pull me ever deeper.

I also know that there is nothing I have done alone. That God, working through my family in recovery, the fellowship, thought that still quiet voice I find within me when I quiet the noise of my mind and the fear of my heart, has been there for me before I ever took my first step into the rooms of recovery.

I chose to not drink, not drug, today, to work my program of recovery today, to laugh and love all I can, today… For I know how far it has taken me since yesterday and I can only dream of how far it will take me tomorrow.

hobie