Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

Can I come home now?

I went to camp twice in my life and I hated it both times.  I was never the kid that was picked first for the tug-o-war, or the girl that the thirteen year old boy with a mustache and side-burns wanted to sneak into the woods with, or even the girl who got short-sheeted by all the mean girls.  Instead, I was the girl, whom, when everyone looks back at their old camp photos, everyone will have this to say about.

"I don't remember her."

I spent the whole long week at camp, both times, trying my best to be invisible.

Which is exactly how I feel right now.  Only, I'm fifty-one years old now and it's pretty ridiculous to feel like a twelve year old back at camp trying to escape notice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going into work every day and busting my ass, and doing my best, and whistling while I work, but....I don't know.  I just don't want to be here.

I'm counting down the days until I can go home.

Here's the thing, I had a long run when I was the "cool" kid, the girl always picked to be the captain, the one who everyone else wanted to "hang" with.

And you know why?  Because I drank.  Because I was the life of the party.  And right now, I know, that if I was still drinking, if I got together with the rest of the gang after work for a couple of beers or glasses of wine, my experience here would be a totally different one. A warmer one.  I would belong.

I know, I know, I can still go out with the gang and not drink, and I have, but it's just not the same.  And the fact is, I  really don't want to. As I said on one of the message boards the other day, I'm too damn old to waste an evening doing something I don't want to do just to try to fit in.

I'm just ambivalent about this whole damn work thing, I'm not ambivalent about the work, I'll never be that, but it doesn't set me on fire anymore like it used to.   I no longer need to be the wittiest person in the operating suite, or the one that all the docs like, why was that ever important anyway?  I just want to go in and get my work done and then go home. 

And I hate that.

Boy, I do sound  like some whiny kid writing home from camp, but the thing is I miss you guys and I miss having the time to be a part of all this and my message boards and my toy drive and my flowerbeds and, of course, the cap'n and Stanley, the blind killer bichon.

The good news is that the panic has abated and been replaced by this ambivalence, but I'm not sure which is worse.  I have to admit that I have missed drinking, but I haven't wanted to drink, there's a big difference, but I have missed having that crutch or, more accurately, I have felt its absence more acutely. No more instant nerve soother, confidence booster, friend-maker, witty repartee tumbling off the tongue generator ready at the finger tips.

That's okay, I like the real me better anyway.  And if "they" don't, it just doesn't matter.