Four Years

          No, this is not a post about politics or terms.

  This February 23rd will be four years of sobriety for me. I have been through a lot of life in those four years and none of it expected. I have also been through a challenging recovery in a number of ways.
  AA means to be involved and inclusion, two words that took on different meanings for me after I sobered up. Being involved was not a problem, I am a person who thrives on doing and being of service. The inclusion part has really been the hard part, I still have to trust my gut and it is telling me that this is all still scary.
 My trust in some people was above the norm and it was used to paint a completely erroneous picture of my character. There are many things that I do that would be associated with some problematic psychological makeups. The INFJ/ENFJ personality type though uses and does those acts for a different reason all together. I am not going to explain again here, let's just say that not knowing that I had issues with certain aspects of interactions, I could not fix them. Nor would I suspect that people would think me to be less than worthy of friendship because of it.
 I would suspect though that if my limited talents was in the area of mathematics people would understand me a lot better, or at least get the geekdom. If I was some kind of prodigy in some area people would get it. No, I am just average and slightly below in a lot of areas, just enough to keep my complex thinking pattern and creating pattern going. Now, don't get me wrong there is a big difference between complex and just messed up, I am trying to mitigate the two of them.....
 This has been a trippy life for the last four years or so. I often think that I haven't changed a bit, or enough to be happy with my progress. I mean there is so much that I have not been able to accomplish and that was out of my hands. I needed help to get my body back into a working condition again, I told some and that too was not heard or misunderstood.
 I have though changed so much, and I am much happier with the success that I have been given.
I am a grateful and loving person, a better Husband, a better person. I don't care if I have any real friends or not, I know that friendship means different things to different people. I guess that is what really is bugging me about this year though. It is all supposed to be about inclusion and fellowship, yet I have never had cake on my birthday or even called on to speak. I have never written my name on the birthday board or had anything more than a happy birthday en masse said to me during a meeting with everyone else. I have to look at the evidence and come to the conclusion that I simply don't belong. To see the Facebook posts of what everyone else does together was enough to drop those folks from my list. Not out of spite or resentment, simply just not constantly needing the reminder that I was not a part of. I am not writing this looking for pity though, it is just a part of my story. There have been good times though, don't get me wrong, but after four years to not find a real friend in all of it hurts. The hurt is not from others, but from within, my biggest failure it seems is in finding myself I lost everyone, and I mean everyone else.
 My wife is my rock, it hurts me when I think of the way I was, that forgiveness is going to be long in the making. It also hurts me to see her watch me go through this. She had a strong man with half a brain before, and now she has a half man with a strong brain now. Not too sure if either incarnation of me is a good thing though. With the mind I have, it may be better to nip it in the bud and get that lobotomy after all.
 Yep, I am going to celebrate four years of sobriety, alone, at home, with the only friends that have really seen me go through a lot of this. Like I said this is not a pity party, I am pleased with the clarity of it all now. They say that this is mostly going to be a mostly painful and lonely life, I can take the pain now because I learned how not to suffer. I can take the loneliness too now, I am happy with my tiny life and tiny blog. I am grateful for it all, and with the shrinking of my life, the bigger picture seems so much clearer. I am who I am, not much, but I am ok with that now. Cheers!