This weekend was my final time staffing. I have had some fantastic times, don’t get me wrong. I’m just so sick and tired that I’m STILL up late at night falling apart because of how little feedback I get, never getting into the now disbanded overt-ops, only ONCE being picked as commander and being not even second choice but THIRD and not even chosen by an MOD to take the position while it’s been no secret I want help working on my leadership skills, being PRESSURED/FORCED to come out about my gender before I was even ready to deal with it myself ALONE, and I just feel like just another body out on the floor instead of a valued op.
Most of you know at least some of the literal PTSD inducing trauma I endured from a former Acen IRT member. Well at least once every con I get flashbacks to when we were at lunch in high school together and he told me after his first bout in IRT when I was showing interest in joining “You aren’t cut out for it.” A big part of staffing these cons was an act of self care. To prove that cuntdouche wrong. Sure I haven’t been blacklisted from working anywhere and staffed much longer and more conventions than he did, but I wanted to be amazing. I wanted to really truly prove him wrong. I wanted help being able to get to the point of being amazing, but most of what I’ve been hearing was deafening silence. Or a lot of “you need to be more confident” which is kind of hard to do when I’m feeling neglected!
It took SO much for me to work my first con as security. I finally agreed to try it out with the support of my dear friends and now husband, both as an effort to move on after getting away from my abuser and to try to impress and fit in to my newfound social group and impress my now husband.
I didn’t fully understand OO, though. I thought “sponsoring” was just how new people got on the team. Not that I wouldn’t have joined after hearing what the idea behind it was, tbh.
My first con, Kitsune 2013, went pretty well considering I literally spent all of Thursday night awake crying and fighting a horrible panic attack the entire night. (Sidenote: I made flashcards and study guides and shit from the handbook and everything to prepare and was brushing up between attacks since it was clear I wasn’t getting sleep.)
My first few cons I truly wasn’t focused on getting out of my prospective status, I just wanted to get the hang of staffing. But then I noticed I was doing pretty well, at least I thought? But others were getting voted in as fast as they possibly could, and I still didn’t have any votes. When I did finally get my first vote, only the member who nominated me for it even remembered I was at the convention I was getting a vote for. I just wanted to do a good job. Idk maybe if I was never in overt ops I’d be less of a mess right now and still continue staffing. Dispatching is pretty great and I’m going to miss it the most.
It’s no secret I’ve suffered from self injury since I was 12. In the last 4.5 years I’ve given to staffing, nearly EVERY single relapse I had was over convention bullshit. The last few years, all of my suicidal daydreams have been taking place at conventions. The worst relapse I've had since before being admitted into the hospital when I was 13 happened because of overt ops drama regarding when I was fucking outed about my gender and then being called out for being pissed and basically called transphobic. That's some bullshit.
There have been too many times I thought to myself that my abuser was right that I’m not cut out for staffing if I’m not even getting noticed at all. Honestly, maybe he was right. But whatever I’m done with all of that. I started working to help me get better, but in all honesty it made me SO much worse. I got a false confidence and it came tumbling down so fast and hard. So here I am. I’m done after this last weekend. The only time I will respond to “Hellhound” is if someone if referring to my gangrel.
Also while I’m spilling my guts, can I just say I totally called that first year conventions are NOT “training cons?” Yes everyone on our Dashcon team did amazing, but baptism by fire shouldn’t be someone’s first experience in a leadership position, and I fucking called it, but why listen to a dirty prospective? I told you so and I'm absolutely entitled to shout out that I fucking told you so!
