Time To Reflect

Of course forest_for_ever isn't my name.  I just created a pen name as most others seem to have done, but for this piece it is important I maintain anonymity.

Ya see, I'm a compulsive gambler and one of the tenets is to 'maintain personal anonymity' so I do.  Of course I have friends who know my name, but that's fine and I have no problem with that.

So why am I sat typing on Christmas Day when I should be reveling or at least celebrating?  The truth is, I AM celebrating. I am rejoicing the fact that I still have a life to live.  I damn near ruined it all with my behaviour over the years.  However, this is not about the gambling part of my life, not all of it anyway.  It's about being compulsive full stop and Christmas for me now is a time of reflecting and making good anything that is bad about myself, which is a massive task in its self I assure you.

I suppose if I were honest the word obsessive fits me better, or somewhere paddling in the shallowest end of the Autistic Spectrum.  Once I get an idea or a belief of the way things should be, I cannot be shaken.  I can't walk away from something; be it a packet of sweets, a heavily laden table of festive food or a simple bet on the horses.  I keep going on until the end and that end nearly broke me or should I say my wife, family and home.  Nothing unusual about all of this, but add careless, reckless and a touch of 'sticking your head in the sand' and you have a recipe for disaster.  I haven't exactly invented the expression 'everything will be okay!' but I perfected it's use.

For years I spent more than I earned, drank more than was good for me and had the morals of a gutter rat.  The ironic thing is, it was my slide into gambling and the false world it created around me that brought me to my senses.  A switch finally flipped in my head and I realised I could not believe my own lies any longer.  Ruin approached and finally I picked up the 'phone and called for help.  Those were dark days, but how much darker for my wife and family who were hit suddenly with something I suppose I had known for a long time. 

These are happy days now.  I am a different man.  I know every penny of our accounts, have sorted out the mess I made and life is so different.  Yet with out the 12 Step Recovery I would not be here now.  If this rings a bell with anyone please, please do this one thing for me...don't ignore it and GET HELP.  Admit you cannot do it alone.