Self-Recovery

Self-recovery is a bitch … and not one that most people tend to share with one another. We all have that time (or times) in our lives where we are in “discovery mode”.  Self-discovery is something that fuels us to move forward – who are we, what/who do we want to be when we grow up, where are we at now in our lives? Sometimes these answers click immediately; sometimes they take multiple trial and error sessions – called life. Self-recovery, however, is an altogether different beast. Most people tend to not recognize self-recovery (or if they do, they don’t talk about it) and its potential importance in life. It is something that not everyone will need to experience for themselves, but for other people, like myself, it is critical to moving forward with our lives.

Oh, you can’t go back to the start, the only way to go back is to move forward … yet one cannot go back in life - that is not possible or healthy. Nor is it something I want to do – after all, if you could change the past, it would change the present and the future. While this has been played out to extremes in movies, books, and comics, it is quite true. Our lives today would change if we went back and altered the past. But that is a debate for another time and another place … back to the topic at hand: Self-recovery.

I am on a path of self-recovery for myself. I’m not looking to go back in time and change what has happened – all things happen for a reason, whether we like to admit that or not. The Fates work their methods for their own reasons. However, I have placed so many layers upon my personality and my life that I lost track of who I was and who I really am. I was so dissatisfied with who I really was that I tried to change that – through fabrication, not actual change. This is a dangerous prospect for anyone with any type of personality (which is all of us) … one lie or story will always beget another. Pretty soon, you lose track of what you have lied about or what it was you have said. I never lost awareness of who I really was – after all, there were “flaws” that I was trying to cover up. It felt easier to lie and make myself seem “cooler” than I actually was. And let me tell you, I am quite un-cool. It took me a few decades to realize and admit that I’m ok with being un-cool – that is who I actually am.

Yeah, I did just say that – I’m un-cool, and in a big way. I have tasked myself with the recovery of who I really am, a task that is not easy or quick. Anyone who has been sick, seriously sick, knows the experience of recovery – your body needs it’s time to heal, to bounce back, if you will, to its previous state of readiness. My self-recovery is much the same, only it’s not my body that is recovering, it would be more my spirit, my soul, and my personality that are recovering. This, however, has the same effects that a body’s recovery would have – pain, weakness, doubt. Picking up the broken pieces of yesterday’s life (or lies) and finding what was left behind or covered under years of dust. Once those pieces are recovered, the critical decision comes about – is this something I need? Is this who I am? Or was it a lesson to be learned and grown from?

That, my friends, is where I am with my life. I have opened myself, wounds and all, in an attempt to heal and recover who I really am. I am full of confidence at times, full of doubt in others. But gone are the needs to cover, to fabricate, to be someone other than who I am. I am attempting this thing called open honesty, and it’s going better than I imagined it would. I’m a 35 year old geek, awkward and un-cool, receding hairline, crow’s feet at my eyes, and hints of white and grey beginning to show their presence, a lover of music, games, comics, history, and movies. I am the fiancée and lover of a beautiful, wonderful, incredibly strong woman, a woman I have dedicated my life to, and one who amazes me every day.  I am the father of a beautiful little girl, and soon to be the step-father of 3 incredible, individual Gingers. I am a son, a brother, a friend, and I am imperfect. But I am me, and I am recovering who I really am, one day at a time.