Category: Words To Live By

I hear people all the time question themselves on why they’re single. I hear others often ask themselves why they continue to date the same type of person over and over again. I even hear those that complain and find fault with every single person they go out with.

The common factor in all of those situations is the person doing the questioning. And at varying points in my life, I have lived as all of them. At times in the past I know I was  labeled a drama queen as I walked around with a ‘woe is me’ attitude when I felt everyone else had someone special to spend their lives with and I had no one. Often one might have heard me complain about someone I was dating regularly and how much that person was using me or abusing me in some fashion. There were even periods of time I went through when I found myself dating one person after another week after week and seeing something glaringly wrong with each of them. What I never realized in all of those cases was that I had some serious housecleaning I needed to do before I could ever meet that type of person I really wanted to be with. Until then, I continued to only attract those to me that were reminders of who I was inside and what I hadn’t faced.

I’ve been watching my roommate go through this a lot lately. I see him going out on date after date after date and not really being happy with any of the people he meets or vice versa. I’ve seen him want those that don’t want him and not want those that do want him. I’ve seen him sad and feeling lonely and in all of it, I’ve seen a mirror for myself on how I used to be. And when I used to live that way, the truth was, deep down I wasn’t happy with me. I wouldn’t have admitted that openly back then because I wasn’t aware of it. I wasn’t aware that I didn’t like me. I wasn’t aware that I was a seriously insecure individual. I wasn’t aware that there were many parts of my makeup that I despised. And I wasn’t aware that I had become the spitting image of the bad parts of my parents.

The result was that I either found fault in everyone I met, or I played the sad card around everyone that had someone, or I just continued to go hook up and be promiscuous telling myself that’s all that I deserved. All any of that did was further reinforce my sadness, negativity, and self-hatred. And the truth was, I wouldn’t have ever wanted to date someone like myself. Why would I have? I hated myself then and I didn’t like many of my own qualities and traits.

I’m a firm believer today that if anyone wants to have a life long lasting relationship, they first need to make sure they’ve healed themselves enough from all their past pain and traumas. Second, they need to make sure they’ve become much happier with their lives because of that healing. And third, they need to make sure that they absolutely, positively, and without a doubt, are really beginning to learn how to love who they are inside and out and would want to go out on a date with someone that had similar qualities as themselves. Until I reached a certain level in all of that, I continued to date people that were just like the toxic sides of my parents. I continued to date people who did nothing more than bring pain and hardship into my life. I continued to date people who ignored most of my own wants, needs, and desires. I continued to date people who always abandoned me. And I continued to always end up being single.

In the past few years, I have sought hard to heal within by first working on turning my entire will over to the care of God. The more I have turned my entire will over to the care of God, the more I’ve been guided to face those dark corners of my life that I was so very afraid to face. Through facing those dark corners of my life that I had always been so very afraid to face, I began to find the strength to make many difficult changes which helped me to like myself a whole heck of lot more. Through making those difficult changes and learning to like myself a whole heck of a lot more, a door finally opened in my life to allow a special person in. Through the door that finally opened allowing a special person in, came a partner who has loved me unconditionally and has done so since the first day we met…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

In about four weeks, I’ll be turning 41. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I’ve lived on this Earth for 14,975 days. What’s even harder is the realization that over fifty percent of them were nothing but a blur of me chasing and living in multiple addictions. I missed out a lot on living life because in each of those addictions, I was doing nothing but hiding from it.

My life today is thankfully quite different. Just yesterday I went to the movies on my own, which is something that for the longest time I wouldn’t do. There’s a theater locally that many people had been raving about and told me I should go check it out. So I decided to go see The Great Gatsby which had just opened that day there. While I enjoyed the movie’s 3D effects and the plush comfy recliner seat I sat in, I found the film to run a little long and be somewhat slow at times. But this isn’t the reason for me writing this blog entry.

Doing anything alone was pretty impossible for me not too long ago. Besides movies, there are so many things that I never could quite get myself to go do on my own throughout most of my life. Rarely if ever would I go out to dinner, take a drive, sit in a park, lay on a beach, or hike on a trail by myself. Why? Because I hated being with me and I didn’t like my own company. The reality was that I just didn’t like myself and the last person I wanted to spend time with alone was me.

One of the first ways I began to counteract this resistance to spending time with just me was through meditation. Sitting still in silence and just allowing the crazy thoughts to go around my head proved to be extremely difficult at first. But eventually, I was able to go on and complete a 10 day silent retreat where I did nothing but meditate, walk, eat, and sleep completely alone and in total silence. It was worth it because when the retreat was over, I wanted to spend a lot of time with just me and God. Sadly, somewhere along the way though, I fell back into my addictions and obsessions, became severely co-dependent on others, and completely forgot how good it felt to just take a day or even a few hours and spend them alone.

With the limiting disabilities that I have been enduring now for the past three years, life has come around full circle from those days I once enjoyed spending alone. Ironically, I now prefer my own company more than not. Having these disabilities temporarily in my life has been a blessing in disguise. They have forced me to revisit a relationship that I left many years ago which was a relationship with myself. On many days, I’m in too much pain to do anything but sit in the house and work on a puzzle or lay out in the sun and read a book or magazine. What’s funny is that a bunch of years ago I would have dreaded the idea of doing one of those things for a complete day. Now, I cherish a day like that.

There’s a simple truth in why I like doing things with just me today. I like me. I like who I’m becoming more and more everyday. I like how I’m living my life because I feel more more pure than any other time that I’ve ever been alive. And I like the changes that God has been doing within me since I decided to let go of my own self-will and follow God’s instead. I can finally look myself in the mirror today without disgust and instead can say that I truly love myself. Even better, I do things regularly now alone because of that growing love. That’s a far cry from a life where I once couldn’t even function without having to have someone by my side all the time.

The bottom line with all of this is that the life I lived in addictions did nothing more than drive me away from getting to know and love myself. Today, I like taking myself out on dates alone because I love that person I’m going out with. But even more importantly, I love who God is having me become and the more I become that, the more I seem to like spending time with just me.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Sometimes I find it’s best to write about a situation that is providing me angst. I guess you can say I might find it healing. Lately, I have been in somewhat of a quandary where I often have no outlet to talk about something that is becoming quite difficult to deal with.

I’ve been renting all of my living spaces now since September of 2007 when I had moved out of the bed and breakfast I owned at the time. I landed in Massachusetts and lived temporarily with my sister while I searched for the next place to call home. The first location was in Brockton where I moved into a friend’s brother’s home who was renting out a room within it. That lasted only nine months. I then found myself moving again, but this time several towns away in Weymouth and into a much larger space of another person’s home whom I had met in one of my recovery meetings. And just over a year ago, I was forced to move again when that owner decided it was time to stop renting out part of their home. Since then, I have been living in a much larger house just a few miles down the road in the same town from where I had last lived. There, I have had to face unique challenges just as much as I did in my previous living situations but overall, I’ve discovered, I am finding it difficult to live with anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, some living situations are easier for me than others. My last three have been the most difficult though as each of them had me renting out and living in the same space as its owners. Prior to this, I had shared living spaces with many other people over the years, but in each of those cases I was an equal owner or renter and not just a tenant. What that meant was that I also had an equal say on all the decisions that related back to the home. Unfortunately, in my current living situation and the previous two as well, I haven’t had much of a say at all on anything. I will admit that I’m not the easiest person to live with. I could be labeled a neat freak. I like everything to be kept in order. And I don’t like messes or clutter. But with each of those traits also comes a strong set of good values. I always clean up after myself. I try to help out where I can with household chores. And I consistently pay my rent on time.

Sadly, I have found that these good values don’t translate into much of anything when it comes to wanting to feel empowered in these past three homes that I have been living in. What I have discovered is that when an individual owns a home and lives within it, they usually have their own ways of doing things around it. I know I’m definitely that way when I’ve owned one. In these past three rentals, I’ve always felt welcomed initially with the “my home is your home” sentiments. But at some inevitable point, those feelings have always disappeared and I’ve found myself migrating to spending most of my time in my bedroom as that is the only place that really is my own domain. And even then, I have seen it really isn’t.

Over the past year I have had several run-ins with the owner of my current home. I’ve had to face a lot of my own control issues as well where I continuously come face to face with the fact that I’m just a tenant renting a room. While some of my ideas and concerns have been taken into account and used by my home’s owner, many have not. The space I’m given in the driveway is under a tree that birds like to have a field day pooping on, in large glorious amounts. I have asked in many different ways for a resolution and the end result is me being told to go buy a car cover. The house also has a large yard around it which I often spent many hours enjoying throughout last spring, summer, and fall. Unfortunately, I have not been able to lately as for about four weeks now, it has became a hazmat zone with over a ton of dirt dropped on it, a garden that has yet to be built, and piping, tubes, and wiring that lay all around it for a well-based watering system that is supposed to be put in.

Then there is the inside of the house and how I’ve been told more than once that the way I’m doing things isn’t right such as how I dispense water from the fridge, what dishes I put in the dishwasher, how I place the garbage bags around the can, what recyclables I should be or not be putting in its bin, and what kind of treats and tricks I can and can’t offer to their dog. Even more distressing has been a backup key that I loaned the owner several trips ago to get my mail from my PO Box when I was away. It has since been misplaced and no attempt has been made to set time aside to look for it. If it’s not found, it could cost me a sum of money that I will have to pay back to the post office. The response I’ve received from my roommate to that revelation was that I should have made that known to him when it was being loaned.

Ultimately, my landlord/owner/roommate does have the final say in everything here at the home I am living in. It’s their house and their rules. I just know I would be handling things very differently if I was in their shoes. A lot of that has to do with the changes I’ve made in my life in the past year with God being more at the center of my life, then me being more at the center of it. I don’t operate much at all anymore by self-will and self-centeredness and I’m working on letting go of control that I once maintained with such strictness in every area of my life. It has allowed me to accept the many differences that exist between my landlord and I. While he procrastinates and openly will admit he does, I don’t. He also is somewhat of a hoarder of things where I traditionally have let go of excess clutter. In addition, he enjoys a few drinks here and there and has yet to settle down with one person whereas I’m in recovery and a monogamous relationship.

Eventually I will be moving on from here and hopefully living with my partner in his home. Ironically, he and I share a lot more in common with our daily living values with some rare exceptions. But in the long run though, I believe it’s a good thing that I’m still living here as a tenant because it’s helping me to face some of my own control issues that still remain within me. God has also helped me to practice a lot more patience, love, acceptance, and tolerance towards my landlord especially when he makes decisions that affect me negatively.

While we may be quite different on behaviors, ideals and how we generally might handle things, the one thing we do have in common is that we both share a piece of God. We both have a soul that is connected to the same Source. And we both deserve unconditional love. Because of this, I will continue to do my best to treat my landlord with all the love, respect and kindness that God would want me to offer, even in the face of frustration that I have been feeling lately when I’m not offered the same.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson