"I am a faulty string of blue Christmas lights"

 I'm getting better at intentionally engaging with facebook and only looking when I feel like my self-confidence is sufficiently robust, but every so often I log into it and my mood entirely plummets.   Today I realized it's about monthly, because all the people I temporarily mute become unmuted.

 

Light's at a work bonding thing, Abundance is at a meetup, I'm home with a brown dog listening to the precipitation fling itself against the windows and cleaning in fits and starts.

 

Light and I went to a handful of open houses on Sunday.  We saw one built on a swamp (the owners were attempting to get FEMA to waive the flood insurance requirement), a condo where the driveway was also the driveway to at least three other houses, a nice house in Medford that had no attic and no basement, just a crawl space under the porch that Light and I immediately deemed the "terror hole" and one so entirely unmemorable that all I remember is how hard it was to park on the road.

 

So, I want Mech's house even more, and texted him immediately to tell him so.  And then Delight and Goodhugs bought a house closer to me this weekend.  Which isn't exactly a conflict, but damn if it doesn't feel a little bit like the universe is biting its thumb at me.  But there's a house out there that has a shitty commute for Light, but a fireplace and an open kitchen and room for a pantry and a fenced back yard and three bedrooms and three bathrooms and a finished basement and a finishable attic and a single car garage and a double car driveway and a mudroom and all sorts of things I want.

 

I did another thing that feels deeply uncharacteristic for me and not only signed Abundance and myself up to attend Relaxacon, but decided that Light and his girflriend counted as my family, and invited them to come along and they accepted.  Now, I just need my dogsitter to get back to me.   

I often bow out of conventions (geek, kink, etc) telling myself I don't need to pay good money to be uncomfortable, to be confronted with my inadequacy or to cry,  when I can do all that in the comfort of my own home for free. 

 

I still fret about my sobriety, not in the sense of I'm afraid I'll fall off the wagon, but that it's showy and attention-seeking when I need to excuse myself from situations and I'm all awkward and prickly.  (I was going to say never say this to an alcoholic, but I'm going to rephrase and say instead never tell me there will be people there who aren't drinking, people who just choose not to and don't mind hanging around with people who are are entirely different from people who can't drink in moderation.)  Sure, drinking was mostly a way to get small vacations from being me and how I feel about being me, but it was also a hell of an effective way to self-medicate for social anxiety.

 

But I'm a morning person which lets me nope out of a lot. and I'm better than ever at taking care of myself and getting space when I need it, even to the extent of learning to notice when I need Abundance to go do something without me for a while so I can just read fanfiction and watch youtube videos until I'm a little more centered.  And I'll bring all the books and my parasol and my stitching and I can probably pull it off.