Circles and Squares

Step One: Admit we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable.

This.... is almost too obvious for words at this point. My life has been unmanageable for so many years now, and here I was just assuming that I just wasn't smart enough/strong enough/good enough to deal with the things that everyone goes through.
And maybe, to some degree, that's true.
That, however, is not the entire problem.
I was still trying to live the life I lived drinking, except sober. Or maybe I was just back to that life.
I quit drinking because I began to behave like my mother- making excuses, justifying actions I wasn't positive were the right ones, and ruining relationship after relationship, always in the same way.
I can't go to the bars---  no, can't is not the right word. I can, and maybe I'll even be able to avoid drinking while I'm there. That is not the life I want, though, and it's not the right life for me. I don't want to surround myself with people who get drunk as a release, because I've been there, and it's an excuse to do what you wanted to do sober but didn't have the balls to. Maybe this isn't true for everyone- I am neither judge, jury nor hangman- but it's true for me, and what I see when surrounded by folks drinking bears an awful strong resemblance to my behavior when I drank.
I don't want to even be sober in that lifestyle- I don't want to be excluded and included at the same time, it's too messy to try to balance that. People making toasts with shots over my head because it's an "alcohol" thing. Having people completely forget to grab that (free) water when they were busy getting a round for everyone else. I don't want to spend that time there, not like that. I don't want to just be a built-in DD for everyone, because that's all I feel like. I'm the babysitter, the one who keeps everyone out of fights, makes sure we all get home safely, who makes sure everything is taken care of- but I'm also the punching bag. I'm the one who's not drunk when someone is disrespectful or belligerent, the one who remembers the insults the next day, the one who doesn't have an excuse to sling one back and expect it to go away by morning. I don't want that life, anymore. I would rather be dancing on tables and passing around guacamole and wearing that stupid Spongebob hat we found, playing board games and taunting one another, yelling and screaming and getting all jacked up on Mountain Dew than deal with one more miserable night of trying to keep up with everyone's alcohol-soaked sagas and mood swings, and of feeling responsible for a bunch of grown ass drunk folks. I don't want to be that person anymore. I allowed myself three and a half years of touch-and-go with alcohol, of craving, of excuses, of frustration and fury and fuck it I'm DONE with that!
< / Rant >