I know for a fact I am a better person today than I was yesterday and every day before.

Trying to describe how I became a better person would shock most people, I will say I had to live lot of awful days and then live a bunch more knowing they were outside the boundaries of my moral compass.

Today I am who I am because of those times.

All the hard days, troubled days, shameful and guilty days have put me on a path to become a better man.

I know how to do a couple things good, I only know how to do one thing great.  That one thing is becoming greater and greater with each passing day.  Staying in recovery.

I have recently done my version of the 4th through 12th steps in a 12 step recovery program and it was going through my past, the parts that made me become this better man, the very things that almost sent me back out to the world that needs recovery.

I found no sympathy, no empathy. I found out who I am today and who I never want to be again.

I went to the edge and I looked down, I decided to turn around and stay.

Living in recovery is complicated, at times scary.  I feel alone most of the time but maybe that will change as my recovery grows.

My recovery is not even 2 years old.  I have found the people who want to help me. I have also found the people who want me to fail so their life will feel better to them.  For me the worst part of recovery is knowing that some people want to see me fail, not all, but some.  Knowing who they are is important and learning to trust no one with my recovery other than me is how I have stayed in recovery for almost 2 full years.

I hope to see my recovery crawl, walk and run as something new.

Achieving  that goal is my personal evidence that I am becoming a better person.

Timothy James Bakken