Month: August 2014

Why I’m So Open About My Entire Life

I’m quite open about my life no matter where I am or what I’m doing these days. It’s definitely a trait I’m mentioned already in several of my writings and one that seems to benefit both my life and others. Unfortunately there are some who don’t share this view, but it’s my hope they might after reading why I’ve become this way.

Several decades ago I was active in the throngs of alcoholism and drug addiction. During those years I was dishonest and manipulative to the very core. What usually came out of my mouth back then was some type of fabrication of the real truth. No one but God and myself really knew the real me and I liked it that way because it allowed me to continue living in these addictions very easily. But below the surface of my alcohol and drug problem was a broken kid who felt alone and misunderstood. When I finally found 12 Step Recovery, it was the openness of people sharing in those rooms about their own addictions that helped me to keep coming back and not feel so alone. Soon, I became comfortable enough to share as openly about what alcohol and drugs did to me as it did to everyone else I had listened to in those meeting rooms.

Unfortunately, my problems went much deeper though than just alcohol and drugs. I carried a world of pain from my childhood into my adulthood and had just masked it with some substances that numbed me. I eventually drifted away from 12 Step Recovery because I didn’t want to face some of that pain and all that resulted in was I finding other ways to numb myself. Once again, only God and myself, and maybe a therapist here and there, knew what I was actually doing in life because I went back to lying to the rest of the world about everything. When almost everyone doesn’t know the toxic things a person is doing, it’s makes it so easy for the ego to continue going down those dark paths.

Eventually, the pain got great enough in my life to realize all my lies and secrecy was slowly killing me inside. That’s when I began to share more openly in those 12 Step recovery rooms about all my other addictions and the pain I carried inside that often drove me to them. I started opening up about the mental and emotional abuse I received in my alcoholic family, about being molested by a former coach, about being bullied throughout most of my grammar school years, about my horrendous sex conduct, about my father’s suicide, about mother’s deathly drunken fall down the stairs, and a lot more. In doing so I noticed I became more humble each time I did it, but even better, my desire to act out in any addiction weakened.

I believe the ego doesn’t want us to ever open up about the things we do when no one else is watching us because it’s those things that keep us numb and not feeling any pain. But it’s an overactive ego that prevents us from ever becoming humble and to become humble means getting honest with a lot more than just God, yourself, or one other person. Getting honest with everyone can help to smash the ego and curb those desires to stay in the dark doing any of those dark things.

I have gained so much inner freedom from being as blatantly honest about my life as I am with everyone and have seen how doing so has also had an added benefit. There are many out there who are slowly dying inside because they too have gone through similar pain and done behaviors they feel no one else has ever done. It’s one thing to talk to a therapist about it, except many of them frequently haven’t ever gone through the same experiences in life to help the person relate. But to hear someone like me share freely and not carry a burden anymore with the same issues that still plague them, can help them tremendously, as it gives them hope.

The fact is, sharing as freely as I do about my life has led many to thank me for giving them hope, but I give that credit to God, as it’s God who helped me to find this freedom. My past no longer has power over me, nor am I acting out in addictions or toxic behaviors anymore because I continue to crush my ego every time I share so openly about my life. But even better, it’s good to know that sharing as openly as I do is also helping others to find hope and healing from the darkness that may still live within them.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Same-Sex Couples And PDA

Picture this scene for a moment. You’re on a date taking a walk in a beautiful park and you notice how breathtaking the sunset is in front of you. You can’t imagine yourself being there with anyone else other than the person you’re on this date with and suddenly you begin to feel a little romantic inside. Do you (a) show them a public display of affection (PDA) or (b) hold back and just say something nice to them instead? This is the dilemma that’s often faced when it comes to being in a gay relationship and going out on a date.

My partner’s and my answer to this question are quite opposite of each other at this present time. I’m truly a romantic person at heart who frequently feels moved to express that side of me when moments such as a breathtaking sunset appear may before me. My partner on the other hand is far more reserved. Unless we are surrounded completely with other gay people already showing affection, he usually feels extremely uncomfortable expressing any type of romanticism towards me. Yet he’s also a person who desperately wants gay people to be more accepted in this country and have equal rights, as do I. But I know to get there; it will take action and having to walk through fear of allowing the world to see whom we really are.

What I mean by this is that the world is never going to change and fully accept same-sex couples if we constantly live in fear and hide our feelings for each other. I should clarify that I’m not talking about “sucking face” or “groping” or doing any other type of PDA that tends to make most anyone feel uncomfortable. What I’m talking about is what you might commonly see between a heterosexual couple when they’re at a park, a mall, the movies, or at dinner. There they might hold hands, embrace, or offer a quick kiss on the lips to show their love for each other. But sadly, same-sex couples still live in a world that’s very anti-gay. This often leads so many of us to stay relatively in the closet and never openly express our love for each other in public at all.

I don’t want to be in the closet anymore on any level and keep living in fear. What I do want though is to be the change I wish to see in the world, as it was alleged Gandhi once said. If I remain in fear the rest of my life waiting for everyone else to change enough to where it becomes fully accepted of a same sex couple doing something such as holding hands in public, I may never see that day arrive. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t wait for his race to gain equal rights, he led them there by standing up to the oppression and inequality that existed all around him. I believe a similar type of movement must happen with those who are gay if we are ever going to see the day where the majority of people can fully accept same-sex couples.

So while the idea of PDA such as holding hands, kissing, or embracing in public may concern many gay people like my partner, I’m willing to walk through that fear today and do any of those things. It’s my hope in doing so, that I’m helping to usher in a new era, one where one’s sexual preference won’t really matter, and one where a little romantic PDA between a same-sex couple won’t have to be avoided in fear either.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Why I Wasn’t “Entirely Willing” To Do The 6th Step

There are two words I tried my hardest to ignore in one of the 12 Steps of recovery for the longest of time. They appear in the 6th step and are specifically the ones that say “entirely ready”. As written, the 6th Step says, “Were entirely ready for God to remove all these defects of character” and to put it quite simply, I just wasn’t entirely ready to let a few of mine go for far too many years in sobriety. But before I go into the reasons why I wasn’t, I think it’s important to clarify something when it comes to addiction and these defects of character.

The underlying problem in any addiction is never really the substance of the addiction itself; it’s actually these character defects that lie underneath it. Many who find sobriety from whatever their addiction was don’t understand that their defects of character were actually there before the addiction ever began. They were also there when it was active within them. And they were still there once they put their addiction down as well. Thankfully though, the 12 Steps can help a person to remove them, but as the 6th Step states, one must be entirely willing to have them ALL removed in the first place. I place emphasis on the word “all” because as I said already, there were a few I just didn’t want to let go of for a very long period of time.

Why I didn’t want to let go of a few of my character defects for years and years solely related to the level of benefit I kept on receiving from engaging in them. One of them dealt with my egregious sex conduct, while the other dealt with my codependency on others. In the long run, neither ever gave me any long lasting happiness, but in the short term, they did provide me a temporary level of comfort. So when I went through the 6th Step for the first time, I was enjoying a sexual affair with a married person and I was also relying upon a friend to lift my spirits up whenever I was down. The reality was I wasn’t entirely ready to let these defects of character go because I felt like I needed them for the comfort they were giving me. But eventually, each began to cause me excessive misery and suffering so much so that I almost relapsed back into several of the addictions that once had masked these character defects. It was then that I became entirely ready to remove them and I’m grateful I did.

Today, I’m not holding onto those character defects anymore nor am I still acting out in any others either. I practice the 6th Step daily to make sure it stays that way, as I never want to return to any of those days when they caused me so much pain and anguish from keeping them around. I’m so glad I learned this lesson that the success of my recovery is totally dependent on being ENTIRELY READY to remove all of my defects of character, and thankfully my recovery today definitely reflects that.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson