My side of the street

In the middle of the messiest years of addiction, I truly thought that was my only problem.  The chaos consumed just about all the energy I had, and I was living in a constant state of survival mode.  When I was so hyper focused on my husband and his addiction, I fantasized about how great life would be IF ONLY he were sober.  Surely all my problems would disappear and life would be perfect.  

Well I’m here to let you in on a secret.  That thinking was inaccurate on so many levels.  First on my addicts side of the street, drugs were the solution not the problem.  So when you take drugs out of the equation, you’re still left with the problem.  Then on my side of the street, I was so busy blaming everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) on the addiction that sobriety became my teacher of reality.  

My lessons continued as my addict was changing, and working on his problems.  His slowly started to disappear, and behind them were MINE.  All my crap was hiding behind all his.  Or really I was so busy looking at his that I couldn’t see mine.  It took time to see what I hadn’t for a long time.  I realized that blaming the addiction for everything left me with no power to change.  If I’m not the the problem there is no solution.  Its hard, yes, but it’s also empowering to acknowledge responsibility because it means I can do something about it.  

Long story short, I still have a lot of work to do, but my recovery began with working the 12 steps myself.  Now that I see all my own character flaws, and can take responsibility, I can turn to those steps to live in a solution.