My disease makes me feel that to have value, I must be perfect. Unless my grades in school were excellent, unless my children are the brightest, my house spotless, and my body the right size, I am a failure. Unless I say all the right things to all the people around me, I am an imperfect friend. Unless I adhere to my food plan perfectly, I am not truly abstinent, not on the road to recovery... I am a failure.

And then I had this thought:; I can make amends. I can learn to forgive others, and I can even learn --harder than anything else-- to forgive myself. It is a big lesson to learn-- and it takes time.

But this disease -- it makes me sabotage even that. I think to myself: making amends, setting things right, is not good enough, because it's not the same as never having made the mistake. To re-glue the vase is not the same as never having broken it.

Reconciliation is not as sweet as the original, unblemished harmony. By such thinking, I doom myself to failure and establish myself firmly in a lose-lose world. "I have not been perfect, and even to aspire now to be perfect won't help; it's too late… " But things don't have to be that way.

'Tis better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.
Samuel Butler

Please, Higher Power of mine, help me learn an even more important lesson:; everything has its reason and its value. Often the glue is stronger than the original material. The friendship and love that have endured a crisis are all the stronger for it. And so it's true… going back is not the same as never having left. It can be better; it can be a new beginning.

Reflecting ... Learning ... Living

Love in recovery,
Leeanne

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