What I Fear Part II

I deeply fear exposure. My family's about to find out about this, but I don't mean that level of exposure. I mean, sure, I am afraid of how it will change the family dynamic, but I'm fairly optimistic about it all. I have finally come to the point that I love myself just enough to overcome my fear of my family finding out.

Allow me to take a detour here. I'm actually very excited about my family finding out! I mean, I have Net Nanny on my phone. Every time a family member takes my phone just to check it out, as family members do, I freak out a little bit that they'll see that little N and instantly know I have Net Nanny and instantly know it's to protect me from accessing porn on my phone. I went to an APR Speaker's Meeting in November, and I preformed a song that I wrote. I was excited about it and mentioned on Facebook that I sang the song I wrote at a fireside. My mom asked me, in person, what fireside. What? What fireside? Who cares? I was terrified and I didn't even tell her, which made for an awkward few minutes. Well, now I can say, "oh, it was a Speaker's Meeting," and I can invite her to the next one! Very honestly, it's going to be a bit of a relief knowing that my family knows, not having to keep so many secrets.

Even so, it's still scary! I'm mostly afraid that they just won't get it. I'm the black sheep already. I drink caffeinated drinks, and I have pierced ears, and I have done a lot of "bad" stuff that no one else in my family has done. This is just going to add (exponentially) to that things-you've-never-done list. Of course, what do I know? Maybe I'm not as alone as I imagine myself to be.

Returning to my fear of exposure- I fear, deeply fear, exposing myself to . . . myself. Part of why I keep a hold of this addiction is to hide from my own self. It hides the little issues I don't want to see. It hides my past. It hides everything. Everything. Everything that I do, at this point, is about this addiction! I have allowed my addiction to be my primary self-definition. I have allowed this addiction to become who I am. I don't know who I am without it.

Now, I already know the addicted me. I'm not happy with my addiction, but I'm comfortable in it. The picture of me being free of addiction doesn't make sense. Oh, how I want it to make sense! But it doesn't. It's like that square peg in a round hole... it just doesn't seem like it can possibly ever work, or ever make sense. I don't know who I am without this addiction!

And maybe that's crazy talk anyway. Maybe the phrase "once an addict, always an addict" is a true statement. Maybe, in some respects, I will always carry this addiction with me. Maybe I can make it to a constant state of remission! Maybe Jesus can heal me enough so I'll be always in remission, in recovery, in redemption. But maybe I will always have something of an addiction with me.

And that's terrifying, too. Why work so hard if it's always going to be that easy to throw it all away?

But that lie is easy to send away. I know why I should work so hard, and I know that I will. However, exposing myself to myself-- that still scares me.

But. I'm just going to do it. I am who I am, whether I like it or not. Discovering myself sans addiction is going to be a scary process, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to destroy the excuse that I can't let go of my addiction because I'm scared of what's hiding beneath it. That excuse just won't cut it anymore.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll like what I find out.



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Lately, I haven't really been communicating with my bishop. We have this thing where I'm supposed to shake his hand every Sunday and give a quick, subtle recap of how I've been doing. We used to meet every other Sunday in his office. But then I was doing so well that he suggested the weekly handshake thing. I'm not doing as well anymore and I think I would benefit more from seeing him biweekly again, but how dumb will that sound? Hey, bishop, can I just take 15 minutes of your time every other week to talk about me? Yeah. Like I'm the most important member of the ward.

Oh well. I'm going to make an appointment for next week and ask him anyway, ask him if I can meet with him biweekly again. I need to pull out all the stops here.

Today, I went to shake his hand, and he asked me how I was doing. I said, kinda glumly, "Well, I've been okay for two whole weeks." In my head I was thinking, "wow, big deal, two weeks. Two weeks is lame. Two weeks is nothing. Two weeks is embarrassing." But he smiled big and said, enthusiastically, "Great! That's really good! Just keep it up!" and that kinda made my day.