April 19 • Remember Dying

Day 284 I have memories of what I was thinking when I was acting out, and putting those in the perspective of recovery is sometimes a challenge. I remember concluding that I was not the man I was trying to be, and not the man that others thought I was. So who the hell was I??

For a few months, the pain of Mr. Nobody fell away as I had an identity of this guy that was so clever to get away with all my lies and all my evil. I had moments of feeling significant again; all of them quickly replaced by long periods of feeling lost, not found. But I thought that if I could put together enough of those moments, the new me would eventually emerge, and I could at least live in a substantive fantasy that I could control. Except I couldn't.

But the truth didn't matter; only the moment mattered to me. I believed that if I ran out of those moments that I would run out of life. I was dying in every way possible and was trying to bluff my way to the end, or maybe trying to feel as much something as I could before the permanence of nothing arrived. These memories are still very clear to me, but I still struggle to believe that that was me. I think the contradictions that raged within me both kept me alive and drove me toward extinction. –JR