Worthiness

Addicts typically have suffered through years of mind-numbingly embarrassing behaviors, mistakes and failures. This is no great revelation. We are marked by both our amazing potential and the crippling tendency to disappoint everyone in our immediate vicinity. It is what we do and seems to become who we are. This notion doesn’t disappear when we put the bottle down; we seemingly cannot and probably will not be able to forget any of the times we came up short in our efforts.

This leads to negative and self-defeating thoughts and self-perception, and why wouldn’t it? When we were good we were pretty good, but when we were bad (which was much more often the case) it was a spectacular train wreck. Long after we’ve come to our senses we notice that we still can’t seem to escape the idea that our mistakes have lessened our worth. Our accumulated damage seems to drive our value so far down that we often don’t feel worthy of basic happiness, health and security.

I got clean and sober a shade under 44 months ago and I have long since struggled with the idea that I wasn’t worthy of happiness. I didn’t believe myself to be worthy of holding a good, rewarding job or being loved romantically. I’d run roughshod over both of those areas of my life for so long that I convinced myself I was too far gone. My best years seemed to have been spent at the bottom of a whiskey bottle and a gram bag. My time had passed and I would simply have to spend the rest of my life accepting that fact. Real happiness would lie forever beyond my grasp because I didn’t deserve it. I was not worthy of it.

This idea is completely, mercifully and absolutely wrong. You see, no matter how far off the beaten path things may have gotten, once you make the choice to live rightly all these positive things can and will be introduced to your life if you become willing to accept your worthiness of them.

I spent my first few years of sobriety in some less-than-stellar situations because I believed that they were the best for which I could hope. I subjected myself to some misery because I did not think myself worthy of anything better. I bought into that lie wholeheartedly until I came to understand that I was NOT the man I used to be inside or out and I didn't have to settle.

I am worthy of a job where I feel appreciated, valued and respected. The same goes for relationships, romantic or otherwise. I have finally found the happiness of which I felt for so long unworthy. I am not a slave to my past unless I choose to make myself one and today I choose to remain free, awake and alive. I am worthy, and so are you.