Veteran's Day - A New Surrender

November 11. Hello everyone & Happy Veteran's Day to all of the vets out there. I had a pretty great day, spending nearly all of daylight with my dad on his well earned day off. We did a lot to list here but there were highlights, like breakfast & a long walk through a nearby town while tires got put on my car. We did some work around the house after getting back too & I made him watch a conspiracy movie I am a fan/supporter of. I can recall times in my life where I either wanted to be out of his view because of my actions & diseased deeds, or my agenda was tainted & I did not want to put up a front or battle to try & be my own person. Regaurdless of how lost I got in those motives back then, or in my addiction, I needed to be the person I was & any guiding from my father in another direction would have just brought on resentment & possibly more hurting of myself to numb his disapproval in my heart. It's that war that I have fought, which the enemy was not clear, like so many of our veterans have fought as well in every country on the planet. Each country has its own heroes & warriors, I too have found my own within me to celebrate & today reminded me of why I have fought this battle. A day like today makes it all worthwhile, to make use of the precious time that before was lost & wasted with my father. It's funny that on this holiday, a topic came up that weighs so heavy in my heart. It's a word that any soldier out there is trained against, and one that any alcoholic or addict must embrace to win a single battle in their life. That one word, Surrender.

On face value, if we say the term "Surrendering To Our Disease", it sounds like we are saying give into it. Just to give up & let it rule us. I thank my higher power that there are fellowships & a program out there to clear this up, had I tried to interpret this myself I would have been lost in the first jungle of 'my war'. I know that the conflict will never be over, but so long as I remain active in my duty as soldiers do for their country, I will stand a chance at surviving free as many countries stand free today. Surrender, I later learned, means to give up the fight & to accept the fatalily & wreckage our disease causes us. It involves that mentality of "I cannot go on, there is too much fighting & I cannot win". In doing so we put down the weapon we have fought ourselves with for so long, the drugs & alcohol. We pick up tools of peace like a white flag, the 12 Steps & a higher power. We cannot have someone else wave this flag for us, we might get gunned down while they survive. We have to wave it ourselves, we have to want to wave it. We could need to wave it, but many soldiers have needed to surrender & died in battle instead. That is the difference between my war & the war of Veterans'. I can come out of this alive if I surrender & free, some of them in Real War could not & have not been set free. I had to believe that I was not going to be tricked or imprisoned, captured where my enemy would never let me out. I had to be convinced before doing this that there was real freedom in my surrendering to addiction.

When it finally happened to me I believe I felt like many of those who have turned themselves over to the enemy alive. I remember saying something like this "God, I have no other way out of this. I cannot fight this fight. I just need some help out of here. If I go with them, please protect me & deliver me from this hell". I feel a tear when I think that many of scared men in uniform have said this same prayer, only to be betrayed & slaughtered or worse tortured by their captures. But my fight was a different fight, I was going to betray myself inevitably, to torture myself eternally & eventually slaughter myself if I did not surrender. I WAS THE ENEMY. I still am, however I have tools today to disarm myself. So long as I keep using those tools I stand a chance at remaining free today. So long as Veterans keep becoming Veterans my country stands a chance to remain free today. In short, an encrypted ode to all vets out there I want to say this. "Thank you so much for NOT surrendering, So that I could surrender today". New Hampshire's license plates used to & may still say 'live free or die'. Isn't that the damn truth. I live free from the bondage of a selfish disease today, or I die. Today I have a conscious choice to do so. Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy