All of your persistence, all of your cares

 I've sadly realized after a little bit of soul searching that I'm not especially passionate about communications for conA and that while I thought I wanted to widen my focus and maybe have a ten year plan for a fun way to learn all the things, what I really want to do is stay with incidence response team.  And on the followup team, but those are two separate things and I have no idea how to do the latter. 

 

And at first I thought that the lack of resolution bugged me personally, as in there were things that happened that I had opinions on that due to confidentiality I couldn't ever know how they resolved.  But now I'm concerned organizationally, I don't have insight into the number of reports or how they've been handled.  I think I want to not be involved in communications on a con level, but at a corporate level if at all.  And to frost the cake of I-don't-think-I-want-this, the all day meeting on Saturday is going to be held in a Irish pub/restaurant.  Now, I could probably power through and do it, but I also can feel my shoulders tense thinking about it.

 

It's hard to explain to other people, maybe because I don't know a lot of people with problems with alcohol, or people who tell me about those problems.  It's (almost) never that my sobriety's in danger from a location or being surrounded by drinking people.  If I ever fall off the wagon it's going to be alone, probably in the dark, with a bottle of Jack.    It's not that.  I'm not entirely sure what it is, but it's not that I'm afraid I'm going to snap and start pounding shots.

 

It's more about energy, and how many active cycles I'm spending on self-recrimination, bad memories and longings.  It's about whether or not I'm going to dream that night about having found some socially acceptable non addictive way of self-medicating myself into caring less that I am myself.  

 

I'm always reassuring people things are fine.  It's fine to eat meat in front of me, just don't rub it on me.  It's fine to drink in front of me, just try very hard not to spill it on me.  It's fine to bring booze into my house, just make sure to adhere to the low-impact rules of pack it in pack it out. It's fine if a partner drinks, just brush your teeth before you kiss me.  ]

 

I keep almost wishing I'd 12stepped,  to have set responsese, to have support, to feel seen (I think my mother still doesn't believe I'm an alcoholic)   But I'm bad at higher powers and I respect other people's boundaries and can't prioritize my healing at their expense and in general it's a couple good things wrapped in a big old bunch of creepy that wouldn't have worked for me and probably would have damaged me instead.

 

But I think I need to say no, I'm not going to go to this meeting.  I'm not going to miss a birthday party in order to be be miserable and mildly triggered for most of a day.

 

At some point I have to say it's not fine.