August 27

”In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.” Honore de Balzac

I lost track of the countless hours I spent looking for that perfect moment, a picture, video, angle, position, whatever it was that was the holy grail that was going to give me exactly what I needed. The saddest part is that I rarely, if ever, even found what I was being driven to seek out in the first place. And did I ever throw a lot of sand and gravel aside in my hunting. My sexual appetite, most especially the mental part, was a bottomless pit that was always craving something that I just couldn’t quite grasp. So I continued to throw endless amounts of stuff into it in the hopes that something would satiate it, but all that tended to do was make it even more hungry. Recovery has been a diet of sorts. And it’s a good diet in the sense that it makes me focus not so much on all the bad things I shouldn’t be feeding myself with, as it is on reintegrating all the good, healthy ones that I have neglected to use. This has really helped me to stop seeking those “perfect” highs that didn’t exist and allowed me to gain true pleasure from the real world and real experiences. The pearls I sought were always close at hand, I just couldn’t recognize them for what they were.

Affirmation May I find the true pleasures in the world around me, in nature, beauty, song, music, laughter, hope and joy.