Intersecting

Sometimes it feels like my worlds collide - like the different versions of myself can't exist in a room at the same time. I usually feel a degree of compartmentalization in my life. The work me, the sober me - they are not the same people. They don't do they same things or operate with the same degree of confidence. They exist in wholly different worlds and every once in a while these different versions of me intersect, momentarily. What happens when I have to be the lawyer me in a social situation, while sober? It can only be described as uncomfortable and awkward. In this particular situation, when my worlds intersect, I have neither the comfort of being a sober person at an AA meeting, nor the comfort of being in my office and great at my job. I have the discomfort of being me, and a not so confident me, and I am overly aware of just how uncomfortable it feels because I don't have alcohol to take the edge off.

Very rarely do I put myself in situations that trigger this level of discomfort. I just don't like to feel that uncomfortable. I stick to what I know - AA meetings and my job. My social life consists of mostly AA these days. I like it that way actually. It feels safe. Though I do think I need to venture outside of AA and back into reality here soon. I fail every time to fully appreciate in advance just how draining social situations that involve alcohol are on me. I go into it thinking - I haven't seen these people in a while - I've been sober long enough, surely I can handle a dinner without getting all fucked up in my head. Surely I can watch people drink all night and be unaffected. Surely I can enjoy dinner and not think about alcohol literally every single second of the entire dinner. Wrong. It's just not so. I think I probably spent at least 3/4 of today thinking about alcohol and how I wasn't going to drink any. You might think - well if you knew you weren't going to drink any, why did you spend 3/4 of the day thinking about it?

I went out to dinner tonight with some people I used to work with at a firm I worked at when I was in law school. I guess I would characterize these people as more my friends than colleagues, though I haven't seen them in a few years. They are people that I drank with, definitely, but I wouldn't say I drank a ton with them. They were more my friends than they were people I drank with. Yet I do associate them with alcohol in some ways - because they are friends from my previous life. There was drinking, like I expected. There was commentary, though light commentary on why I wasn't drinking, like I expected. There was a lot of talk about alcohol, like I expected.

I would be lying if I said I didn't think about it - well obviously, since I said above that I thought about it all day. I thought about what it would be like - what it would feel like to have that wave of ease come over me. I thought about how stressed I feel generally lately and what that relief would be like. I thought about what it would feel like to feel more comfortable in the situation, to feel more like myself or like I could be myself. That feeling of being uncomfortable in your own skin. I thought about it right down to what I would order, Frangelico, red wine, a mojito? All three? I even had the thought - but no one would know. No one would find out. I would even say that went so far as to contemplate ordering something. And though this thought was fleeting, I still thought it. That feeling that you get, when you drink - that is without a doubt my favorite feeling in the world.

There is a reason I stay out of these situations. It is next to impossible to endure one without my mind going there. My instinct, when I am uncomfortable, is to look for relief. Whenever I do have one of these experiences - it really scares me actually. By the time I get home - I usually feel like I've been run over by a truck. I just don't feel right for days. It just reminds me that this gift that I have - it is fragile. I realize how easily I could go there - just in a split second I might make the wrong choice. Now granted it's a lot easier to make the right choice after being in the program for two years, however, this is meaningless really when it comes to the power of this disease. And why would I ever even consider it at this point? Simply because I am an alcoholic. It's what I think about - how to get some artificial relief from myself.

Unfortunately - I tend to beat myself up for days after these situations. Thinking - I can't believe you thought about that. I can't believe you entertained it like that, fantasized about it, when you know better than to let your head go there...what if you had done it - what if you couldn't have stopped yourself? Have you lost your mind? Sometimes, though not always, when I am in these situations, I feel like I am playing with fire. I feel like my life is at stake when I am in these situations, and you know what, it is. It's a life and death choice that I make every day.

Sometimes I think that I am less an alcoholic than other people - my life doesn't look like my mother's for example. All it takes is one dinner like this to remind me that I am not immune. The point anyway though - is that I didn't drink. I might have thought about it, entertained the idea, fantasized about what I would order, imagined what it would feel like, but I didn't do it.