breaking up is hard, but keeping dark is hateful

[freckles_and_doubt]

So, it's been this torrid, ten-year, slightly obsessive romance. It has required enormous amounts of my energy to start a relationship from nothing: woo the other, learn their ways, keep the interest going, make it work. I wouldn't say it's a break-up, precisely, but I'm realising, more and more, that the relationship is not healthy: I'm feeling these interactions as demands on me, and I'm starting to resent them to a quite disturbing extent. I'm not saying it's over between me and the SCA, but it's no longer satisfying for either of us, and at the very least I need a time out.

I have, of course, been moving towards this for the last year or so, during which the melt-down in my career has taken a quite inordinate amount of my mental energy: now I have a new job, which is not only demanding but is not quite the job I want, and which still takes ongoing mental negotiation to keep me from hair-tearing and the wringing of hands. I'm still not in a space where I can say I'm where I want to be, or have achieved most of the things I need to achieve. I am serious about keeping up the research and writing on top of an admin job, and that's going to take a lot of energy. I'm also horribly conscious of the fact that the lack of success in my career is at least partly because I've always given so much energy to things like roleplaying and the SCA. They've been truly wonderful experiences, but I should have been more moderate. There is also a truly sad corollary that that kind of hobby does me an active disservice in the eyes of my academic peers: every time I'm in public in garb, I find myself dreading an encounter with a colleague. Insecurity is an awful thing.

The problem with the SCA is that I was a founder member of our Shire, and have only really been absent from officer positions in the last year or so: I relate to it in terms of an ongoing sense of responsibility which leads me to volunteer to do things when I know I don't have the time or energy. (The consciousness of being a gosh-darned Pelican really doesn't help with this). We're a tiny group so the organisational work habitually devolves onto the shoulders of a few energetic people, and I beat myself up with extended guilt trips about the added pressure on everyone else if I opt out. This means it's a no-win situation - either I get involved and feel resentful about it, or I don't, and resent the bad feelings I inflict on myself.

I've stepped back a bit from the SCA lately, but it clearly hasn't been enough: stepping away entirely is, I think, a necessary thing to break these negative patterns, but it's going to be horribly hard. The local SCA crowd are among my closest and most valued friends, responsible for wonderful experiences and memories, and I already feel that my reluctance to involve myself is on some level a betrayal of them. Half of them are cheerily managing careers and young families on top of their SCA activities, and it makes me feel particularly useless and feeble to say "I can't do this." But I honestly can't. I can't seem to stop myself from volunteering, so I need to not be taking part at all, at least for a bit.

We have this big March event with overseas visitors who are particularly dear to me, and I shall do my best to fulfill my obligations for that. After that, I'm packing up and moving out, muttering things about "clean break" and "when I have my head together". It's going to be a horrible scene, probably with me in tears. I hope the SCA doesn't throw things.

Last Night I Dreamed: diverse and confused things. Trying to rent a house from someone's particularly mad and demanding mother. Being at a large partyish thing and carrying around someone's rather cute baby boy, occasionally upside down or in the bottom of my handbag. Rescuing people from a burning skyscraper, in the middle of which I was also trying to help a couple of confused academics interpret mystic Chinese semaphore, and realising that I had to go home to change because I was not formally enough dressed for the wedding. Possibly I shouldn't eat a portion of Bubbling Chocolate Tar-pit Death just before going to bed.

Comments

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course. You're right in everything you say. No throwing. Much sadness.

If we're not to see you though SCA stuff, then we'll need to construct occasions when we *do* see you.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I didn't really expect things to be thrown, it just seemed to fit the break-up cliché... :>. You are all my friends, and have always been understanding above and beyond the call of friendship with regards to my messier dysfunctions. And, yes, was thinking exactly the same thing - more dinners! more lunches on campus! more general hanging out! Only not for the next two weeks, on account of madness.