A Monster of a Winter
I'm having a bit of a mental dilemma about the next four months of my life. The fact is, it's going to be incredibly stressful, taxing, emotional, depressing and draining. I don't want to keep alcohol in the equation as my "mock coping skill" but at the same time I'm about 99% sure that I'll be battling drinking and abstaining days throughout it.
Why it will be so stressful is that I have to run the graphics department for the company I work for on my own because our senior graphic designer will be on maternity leave...and literally, there is too much work for one person. And if it were just a lot of work, that'd be okay but the job includes stuff that my personality just can't handle. Business travel to visit higher ups that speak French and yesterday I had to scream over one of our salesguys on a conference call because he was accusing me of ignoring his email when I'd simply just forgotten it. I have a very hard time dealing with confrontation like this and the next 4 months will be ALL confrontation.
Second part of my monster winter is seasonal depression. I go into a "winter coma" in January and February and then start acting irrationally from March-April, not settling down until May. This was where I lost my 8 months of sobriety last year.
I feel like maybe all I can do is try my best. Meaning use my RPOC (recovery program of choice)...I can make my own acronyms too addiction recovery world! lol I'll be using SMART. Not to say that's right or wrong for anyone else, but that's what I feel is right for me.
I feel like I'm dumb to even TRY getting sober during this time but also, I hate being alcohol dependent, I freaking hate it to pieces! I don't want to wait until things settle down in the spring.
I don't know what to do really; I guess I have to try to stay sober through what I can but if I do drink, I should just learn from it and try to stay sober again. Who knows, maybe I'll learn how to get screamed at and then not go drink. lol