Daily Reprieve

My eyes are set in my head so that I can never see my own face.  That part of my body that I use so much to communicate who I am, I rarely see.  So when pictures and videos allow me to see me from the outside, I am often surprised.  I judge harshly and am rarely pleased. 

Mirrors have been used for a long time.  Our self-awareness as a species makes it so vital to us to catch a glimpse of our own face.  Even there, the image is inverted.  It never perfectly reveals to us that intimate element of our being that everyone else can so casually inspect. 

So I depend on the secondary interpretation of their reaction to what they see when they truly look at me.  I hunger to know the mystery of who I am through their eyes.  What I see when I look at this most ancient of human mirrors, the eyes of those who care to look my way, is sometimes pleasing, satisfying, but most of the time it is disturbing and disappointing.

I did not choose this face or body.  Some hidden power in an intimate dance of chaos and order deposited me here.  The Creator God?  The Web of the Universe?  A genetic crap shoot?  I don’t know. 

I am tired of what I see in their eyes.  I understand the program to say that I am as powerless over my shortcomings as I am over alcohol.  Being able to connect and make good use of the eyes of other sufferers is where I found relief from alcohol. 

This entry was posted on November 15, 2009 at 11:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.