Moving Forward with Patience

Patience- Word of the Week

Patience is a virtue and at times it can be virtually impossible to with-hold.  Through the years of active addiction and instant gratification, I found that patience was a moral that didn’t exist when I was dope sick.  Although overtime I began to build a tolerance to being patient while waiting for my fix to arrive because kicking and crying didn’t solve anything in the moment.  At that time being patient was the only thing I could really rely on (since I didn’t have many reliable drug dealers to keep me somewhat sane).  The virtue of being patient now in recovery tends to keep me content.  I can be OK with myself for weeks or months, sometimes I forget the time that passes, but there are also times where I lose myself.  I feel jealousy is the main offender.  Jealousy of others in recovery and outside of the program can swindle the way I feel about myself and cause great feelings of complacency.  I lose gratitude and gain anger when I think or believe I should be further along in my recovery.  When complacency arises, I believe it’s one of the toughest and most difficult times to pull out of.  Harboring these beliefs about myself doesn’t fix anything. In fact, it’s the same as kicking and crying like in my active addiction. I know that these times of impatience tend to blow over but allowing myself the “time” eventually restores my patience.  Within this “time” comes the help of my support group.  They tend to reflect back to me like how a mirror would and I can see and feel the discomfort that I’ve caused.  So yes, patience to me is a lesson to learn for the sake of moving forward in my sobriety.