Shape Shifting Seaweed

I spend a lot of time pondering my tendency to bend myself into whatever shape I think I need to assume to best fit the situation.  Sometimes this is admirable and kind.  After all I'm going to start a conversation differently depending on the circumstances.  I'm going to take a different approach with a new person living in a halfway house than with a well-off lawyer with a good job and a nice house, even though the progression of their disease and the consequential destruction will bear a lot of similarities.  And I freely admit to being a total shape shifter when I was drinking.  I wanted you to like me and I wanted to fit in so I put on whatever facade was appropriate.  This is not how I want to act today and I think - for the most part - I'm a pretty authentic character.  What you see is what you get.  It may not be all that great but it's me.  I'm not putting on a show for anyone.

Still . . . I find myself feinting and juking.  For instance I was invited to breakfast along with a large contingent of members from the Keep It Complicated meeting to help a woman celebrate an A.A. birthday.  While I was pleased to be included this really isn't my gig, my thing, not in my comfort zone, my interest zone.  I would be happy to go out to coffee with you.  I'd be happy to join you and one other person, maybe two, depending on the crowd maybe even three, but after that I don't groove on the vibe.  Too many people, too many conversations on too many topics, people jostling to talk to you and over you and around you, too many people that don't interest me all that much, too much, too many, blah, blah, blah, get away from me, you feel me?  Because I care about the birthday girl I decided to tell a little white lie and skip out on breakfast.  I wasn't lying to make myself feel bigger or to deceive or hurt anyone so I almost justified the lie on the grounds that I was being kind.  Still, it sort of ate at me a little bit.  In the end, I just said that I couldn't make it and she was fine with that.  She expressed a lot of gratitude that I'm at the meeting regularly and she did not delve into why I wasn't coming and that was that and it was a lot cleaner than lying.

Per usual, my sense of my importance is highly overrated.  I am more than certain than everyone had a good time at breakfast and that no one noted that I wasn't present.  I'm not on everybody's mind.