Completing A 10-Year Promise, Taking A Much-Needed Break, And Becoming Open To What’s Next…

Today’s article marks the end of a 10-year promise that I made to myself and marks the beginning of the next chapter of my life as well, to whatever comes next, one that has yet to be written. For what began as an online journal of sorts and morphed into something much bigger, for something much Greater, I have continued to expand both my mind and my heart in the process.

TheTwelfthStep has been an amazing adventure that so many have supported me along the way in my efforts to keep this going. While there have been many blessings and many heartaches through it all, each has helped me onto a much Higher Path of consciousness and one I am thankful for every individual who publicly and privately messaged me along the way. Each of you, in your own unique expressions of God has helped me to become something more, and as I continue to spiritually grow, after posting 3,650 entries in here, I know it’s time to take a much-needed break from this.

Every late night, just after midnight, for the past 10 years, I’ve written from my heart, about gratitude, about addictions, about my painful journey, about life experiences, about love, about heartache, about jokes, and everything in between. I grew to become more and more transparent in each of the things I posted, including so many pondering questions to insightful quotes. And somewhere along the way, I became someone else, and something else, and each of you helped to play a part in that.

I actually don’t know exactly who I’m becoming now, but what I do know I’ve done is achieve something I set my mind and my heart out to do ten years ago, and that was to write for ten consecutive years, every, single, day, all to reveal each and every thing I went through in life to make myself fully transparent with the world.

What I’ve learned through this all is that it really is ok for each of us to be ourselves, even when fear tries to tell us otherwise. And it really is ok to step out on our own and beat to our own inner drum, even when society tells us we shouldn’t. I’ve done that now for ten straight years and I most assuredly can tell you it’s been so very freeing. I’m a better man now because of it and have become far lighter and far brighter because of it as well.

I know I will miss my daily interactions with everyone that came from maintaining this blog on a daily basis, but I’m not saying goodbye to it either. I’m just choosing to take a much-needed break to see what God has in store for me next. Maybe it will be taking my writing in a different direction or reporting on a whole new chapter in a life that begins elsewhere. Regardless of whatever comes next, I love all of you unconditionally and hope that TheTwelfthStep has blessed you in some way, shape, or form somewhere along the way.

From my heart to yours, one soul to another soul, thank you. I truly love you all unconditionally.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

From Seeking Immortality To Accepting Mortality…

There’s a short story by a man named Jorge Luis Borges from Argentina, which tells of a soldier from Rome who drinks from a secret river that provides immortality. Over time the soldier realizes immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, that life without limits is life without significance. Eventually, he comes to understand that it’s death itself that gives meaning to life and so thus begins his search for an antidote to his immortality, which ends up being in a secret spring that restores both his mortality and ultimately, his peace.

Gaining immortality is definitely something that has fascinated me ever since I was a kid. I have watched countless science fiction and fantasy-based TV shows and films on the subject including “Forever”, “Highlander”, “Tuck Everlasting”, and “The Age of Adaline”. And now having turned 50 in 2022, I find the subject even more alluring. While I used to think if I ever found some elixir or some fountain of youth that could create immortality for me that I’d drink from it as quickly as I could, today I find myself rethinking that notion quite differently.

Truth be told, what I hope for now is to live another half century of life where I am focused on three things. Selfless giving, spreading love and joy around the planet, and spending every second of it growing old with just one person to love who I get to share my entire heart and soul with, who shares the same with me in return. And I believe that will happen. I truly do. But to think of doing this with someone I love that deeply who I’d eventually outlive, who I would endure having to watch wither away and die while I continue to go on, brings up a great despondency within me.

I don’t think I’d ever want to experience a love as deep as this leave this planet of existence while I continue to go on forever, only to repeat the cycle again eventually with another and another, watching love repeatedly turn to heartbreak, until life itself becomes lonely and pointless.

On some level, this is precisely how I feel about what I did with the first half century of my life, as I made it pointless. I spent the first half of my life mostly pleasing myself, my carnal senses, fulfilling all my selfish desires, only to leave me feeling broken and alone time and time again. But through it all, I’ve learned one invaluable lesson.

What really matters in this world is not in attempting to remain youthful, trying to look immortal, or buying and consuming anything that makes you appear or feel temporarily better. What really matters is simply just being close to another’s heart and soul, in sharing love with them from the deepest of places, spending countless hours talking about life, and being close in a way that words just can’t describe.

Words for this type of love come from something Greater and are something I am only just coming to learn about now at my half-century mark in life. So, as I begin the next half century of my life, I find myself no longer interested in immorality or attempting to remain youthful through any of what this world has to offer to elongate life. I’m simply looking to share what I have left on this plane of existence with someone to age with, who wants to live life to its endless possibilities, embracing what matters most through it all, and that’s one thing and one thing only, it’s unconditional love, and it’s the only thing that matters to me anymore when it comes to accepting my mortality.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Type Of Love I Truly Deserve…

As I sit here in Starbucks drinking my cold brew during what feels to have become the loneliest holiday season ever, I find myself pondering something I’ve realized I’ve let everyone else dictate for my entire life and that’s the type of love I truly deserve. Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve allowed myself to be told I’m being too needy. Having had alcoholic parents who couldn’t give me love freely or unconditionally is where this pattern began.

Here’s the thing, when you try to go to someone who’s broken and ask them for love, well you’re going to get a broken answer, which usually equates to being told you’re being too needy. Because in reality, they can’t offer you the very thing you deserve. You can ONLY get unconditional love from someone who knows how to love themselves unconditionally. My parents never loved themselves unconditionally so they couldn’t ever give me that type of love and neither could any of those I pledged my heart to afterwards for the same reason. And that was only made worse by the fact that I didn’t love myself unconditionally as well, mostly because I never learned how to.

I believe that like attracts like, which led me to attracting people who were only mirrors for all my brokenness stemming from my childhood. Everyone became mirrors of my dysfunctional parents and each reaffirmed the broken patterns I learned way back then from them, leading me again and again to the same conclusion in their minds, that I was too needy. When in reality, I only needed to learn how to unconditionally love myself for this pattern to finally end. And when I finally did learn how to do that over the past few years, I realized what I want now is someone I’ve never been with yet.

Honestly, it took me living an entirely broken childhood and five long term relationships to finally grasp the type of love I truly deserve and always have. And I know God wants this type of love for me now as well. I know now that I deserve to be in a relationship with someone who wants to grasp my heart and never let go of it, who wants to hold me and love every minute of that without counting the minutes of how long they have to do it, and who wants to embrace my lips with such passion that they feel my soul through them. Throughout my entire adult life thus far, I’ve chosen one person after another who has never been able to offer me love like this.

Instead, I’ve allowed myself to be embraced in worldly ways with mostly carnal expressions of love with those who always seem more concerned with my appendage size, what I look like without my clothes on, what type of body hair I have, what sexual positions I like best, and countless other lower vibrational things that honestly don’t matter if you want to have a relationship filled with unconditional love. But when you choose to live in a relationship with someone who begins it with carnal expressions of love, when their fantasy of you runs out, so does that type of love, and that’s precisely when you start getting told you’re being too needy each time you approach them for greater expressions of love.

I know what type of love I want now and I’m waiting for it. Because I truly deserve it. And always have…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson