Addict

This post may be deleted very soon.
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20 October 2006

I am an addict. Call me whatever you want: criminal, freak, deviant, pervert, et cetera. Neither your opinion nor your label changes what I know I am.

Would you like to know what else I am/have been? An honor roll student, a scholarship recipient and graduate of one of the country's leading college prep schools, an award-winning author, a poet, a cadet and mid-ranking adult officer in a military auxiliary youth organization, a Sunday School teacher, and a scouting volunteer. I am a good, intelligent, passionate, creative, articulate, spiritual and self-aware man.

I haven't done these things to try to hide my dysfunction, but because I think they are the right things to do. My addiction alone doesn't disqualify me from any role I choose. I have crossed lines before, and broken laws, and hurt people (adults) to meet my needs in the wrong ways. I've been selfish and childish and decietful and destructive and all manner of ugly in the way I've handled my life and my connections with fellow humans. But...

Every day I get a new chance to be a different person. Most days I make good choices, some days not so much. I move on because there is only one alternative in this world. Every day ends, whether good or bad, and a new one starts right after it. Every action I take is a tangent of the whole curve of my life, and no single one can characterize it all. Recently I choose well more often than not, and of that I'm proud.