I’ve made some mistakes during my time here on earth.  Some of them are irreversible, never to removed from my permanent record.  An example of one is that I’ll never be allowed to give blood at the local blood bank.  This bothers me and I suspect will always bother me.

In recovery, there is a promise that states “you will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it”.  I can honestly say that in most cases this has been true for me, once I owned up to my secrets they no longer held any power over me.

It would seem the mistakes I’ve made while sober are a little harder for me to let go of.  The thought process goes something like, “you should have known better”, or “that promise doesn’t count if you do stupid things while sober”.  The gremlins, they tell me this.

This one thing that I do that helps to keep me sane, healthy and relatively peaceful is a thing that became my mistake.  I write in the shadows not to tease, but to protect what I can of the mistake that I made.

This mistake, this most recent one is connected to a part of me that goes to my core.  My core, therefore is cracked.  Perhaps even permanently broken.  It’s so bad that I cannot even write about it.  At least, not now.  Maybe in a few thousand years.

Typically when something such as this occurs, I would retreat into the safety of my own self hatred and depression but that isn’t working quite as well as it used to and I want it to.  I suspect therapy, medication and recovery have done their job in blocking access there.

I want to be able to say things like, “You are the biggest piece of shit that walked the earth, everyone hates you, and you will never accomplish anything worthwhile in my life” but it isn’t working.

I have to stand my ground and take it like the woman that I have become.  I have to walk through the minefield of regret without my my old bag of sick, twisted, and mangled rotting emotions, things that I liked to call “my precious”.

Mistakes serve a purpose, they come about as a result of living life.  I take risks, I fall down, I get back up and try and learn from it.

The irony with this mistake is that in some ways I have to trade my safe for the un-safe in order to not let it happen again.  It’s a mistake that not only affects me, but other people.  Someone that I never wanted to see hurt, someone that I’ve been trying to protect.

Tweet This! Delicious Digg This Post Stumble This Post