Day 77…Progress, Not Perfection

Growing up, if I wasn’t 100% sure that I’d be the best at something, I just wouldn’t try at all.  I was a swimmer during my adolescence, and typically I swam freestyle and backstroke.  And I just about always won.  I remember one time swimming breast stroke and lagging behind.  The humiliation I felt, I can still feel it today as if it is happening again.  It was awful.  I swore I would never do it again.  And I didn’t.

That’s the way it feels sometimes.  To have hit my bottom and to have to work to slowly build myself back up, and I know I must have it all wrong.  I know that this feeling is not humiliation, or at least it shouldn’t be considered that, I don’t think.  It’s probably closer to humility, and being forced to be more humble is definitely also making me closer to my Higher Power.  But to be completely honest, I just want to win this race again.  I just want my life back.  I hate swimming breast stroke.  But I do have faith that it’s what I need to do in order to eventually have the life of my dreams, and I’m being told that eventually, with time, it’ll get easier and I’ll catch up to the others who seem so far ahead.

Right now, being new and being 30 and living with my father and not having a car (and having lost so many relationships and things) is sobering in itself… I think I’m someone people are interested in giving a lift now and then, but I feel as if until I’ve proven myself to be a little more stable, no one is really interested in developing a friendship with me.  And I guess it’ll take some time.  Just like I wish for instant recovery, I also wish I could make instant friendships.  That’s the way things are in rehab, but rehab is not really the best representation of reality.

I have 77 days today, going on 78.  I have 3 days abstinent going on 4.  This is a miracle.  What it really is is progress.  It’s progress, not perfection.