May 30

INTEGRITY MONTH: DAY 30: “I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.” –Oscar Wilde

When I do something that I know is wrong, I often feel badly about my behavior. If I do this often enough, I will begin to feel badly about myself. When I do it as a lifestyle, I really begin to hate ME. This is how I got here, hating myself more than anyone I had ever known. There was no reason to take care of myself or to stop using or drinking when I hated myself so damned much, because I used those to try to forget how much I hated myself. This cycle could have gone on forever, until I died drunk and/or loaded. Now I know when I am doing something that is not right. I can clean it up right away, because the feeling of doing things wrong is so uncomfortable and never worth what I may think I am gaining with the bad behavior. Learning this is a great freedom from addiction and the thinking that goes along with it. I am an angle-shooter and want to find and use the loopholes in honesty and integrity. I have looked and sometimes have found where some of them are. I have also tried a few of them in this recovery journey, only to discover that those old feelings of contempt for myself and my behavior come back to me. I don’t like living with these feelings, so I have to clean it all up. Sometimes the wrong is so slight others look at me like I am crazy, but it doesn’t matter. I have to walk the road with ME, so I have to do what makes it okay and comfortable for me to walk the road with a me I like and respect. I felt like a monster in those old days of those old behaviors and I treated myself like a piece of dirt because that is how little respect, honor and integrity I had for myself. Today I feel good about who I am and what I do most of the time. I still have some interesting lapses, but I can honestly say that I enjoy my own company a great deal more now than I ever have. So the process continues to sand down my rough edges and gets my behavior closer to the way I am here to be, a spiritual being walking around in a physical body. I want to be the highest and best Kelly I can be. As this journey continues, I don’t know what is coming and what is going, but I always want to remain mindful of being who I was created to be, not who I can become when I forget about these things and how they work.