I am going to try to post entirely verbally. I am going to attempt to make my thoughts come to life between my brain and my mouth. Hopefully, they will be easily read and understood.
The last few days, I have been feeling down. Different. It's not different from how I usually feel, but it is different from how I feel when I'm feeling like I believe a neurotypical person would feel. I know why I am feeling this way. I am feeling this way because I have overwhelmed myself with variables. I took on some extra days at work, I scheduled and ran some staff meetings, and I was more involved with the kids school work than usual. I am useless without a reliable skeleton of a schedule. I'm not talking about everyday I wake up at the same time, I always cook breakfast, always do things at the same time every day of every week. I am talking about just a work schedule and home schedule, and the results of the divorce decree, in which I have the kids from Sunday afternoon through Thursday, and the ex has the kids from Thursday night through Sunday morning. I work Thursday Friday and Saturday overnight.
These schedule changes over the last couple of weeks have caused me to go into a tailspin emotionally. In my head, I am holding on to everything I am aware of, everything I am cognizant of, everything that I can control in order to not completely meltdown or go into a tailspin that sends me over the edge. I need to stay sane.
I am very good at pretending to be "normal". But, as a friend likes to say, I'm okay in small doses. I cannot maintain the facade forever. And, in fact, the facade tends to chip away very quickly after I am outside of my comfort zone. My comfort zone, which includes my skeletal schedules.
Case in point. Monday night, I had a staff meeting. I ran the staff meeting, because the boss was out of town, and I am one of the head technicians at the clinic. I am the only licensed technician that is full time at the clinic. The boss relies on me to make sure that things run smoothly when she is not there (talk about pressure, though it actually comforts me as well). And, it doesn't hurt that the majority of the support staff comes to me when they need things. I feel as though my work family is as close as my actual family. Which sounds really sweet, except my real family isn't that close with me. And I'm okay with that. But I like to think that we are on good terms, that we can talk to each other when we need to, & I do love them, my family and my work family. So I was running the staff meeting, after having worked lots and lots of extra hours over the last week and a half. In fact, the last month. The ex has been out of a job, and so I have been taking on extra shifts to alleviate the necessity of child support.
After the staff meeting, I had hoped to go to a local tavern that I frequent to have a drink. Monday night is also karaoke night at that tavern. I love karaoke. Karaoke has a paradoxical effect on me, in that it calms me. It suits me, & I end up feeling better after I've sung in front of strangers. It is paradoxical because I have major social anxieties. I am, after all, high functioning autistic. Unfortunately, however, I still have to overcome the paralyzing anxiety involved with getting out of my car, walking into the bar, making my way to the bar, ordering a beverage, remembering which beverage I enjoy, and handing over my card. Signing up for karaoke is only a small problem, but being called up to the stage and actually singing into the microphone is not. Oddly enough, that's the easy part. Probably because I only really sing songs that I know, and that I know that I sing well. I very rarely choose a new song to sing in front of everybody. I like to leave those songs for days when the bar is not very full, or when everyone is very, very, drunk.
I do not like to enter a bar that has too many cars out in front of it. I don't mean all the parking spots are filled, I just mean that, if it looks at the time that there might be a lot of people in the bar, or even a lot of cars outside of the bar, I will not go in. Or, I will sit outside the bar long enough to try to psych myself up to go into the bar. It does not always work, and on Monday night I saw that most of the parking spots were filled, which indicated there would be a lot of people in the bar, and so I did not even stop to psych myself up. I admitted defeat, and decided it was time to go straight to bed. A part of me knew that I would be able to go out on Wednesday night instead, after the second staff meeting that I had scheduled for those people that could not make it to the Monday staff meeting. I know, I'm a god damn Saint (scheduling two meetings to accommodate the staff lol).
I spend most of Tuesday sleeping, as sleep is my number one recharging go to when I'm overwhelmed. Sleep is sweet bliss, as my brain can run free and I do not have to constrain it or restrain it, rather, to normal people things and schedules. Wednesday, I was supposed to have the second staff meeting, but it turns out that nobody could come. So I decided to reschedule it, and I was going to have a wonderful evening baking cookies with my children, and then a coworker had to call out for a family emergency. Of course, being who I am, I tell her to get the f*** out of Texas and go be with her family. Not to worry, I will take over her shift, and as she is only working a half shift it will not be that big of a deal.
Of course, this screws with my schedule, which throws me off, which kind of sucks. However, work tends to have a normalizing effect on me, and so it was probably going to be okay. Baking cookies would have been worse lol. I do not like to bake, & I do it strictly for the children. So I go to work, and it's very slow, & I get to leave early. How exciting! I get to go have that drink that I wanted to have on Monday! How delightful! And, to top it all off, a very good friend that I have not seen in a very, very long time is a karaoke jockey at a local bar. I can go and see him, his wife, and some patrons that I have not seen in a good 6 months or so. Sounded like a plan.
Well.... It did not work out. By the time I got to the parking lot, I was in meltdown mode. I was ready to cry - the tears were stinging my eyes. My brain was a swirl of anxiety. And there was somebody at the door, which is a big no-no for me. My anxiety will not let me do it. I cannot approach somebody who is standing at the door unless they are a bouncer. There were two people standing there talking and I did not recognize either one of them. So, I decide to sit in my car and meditate for a few minutes. I set my timer for 20 minutes, I close my eyes, and I lay my seat back. One would think that this is dangerous, but I'm pretty familiar with the area and I locked my doors. My eyes closed, the timer on, no sound from the radio, no sound from my phone. I drifted off a little bit. Brought myself back from the brink of a meltdown. However, my anxiety would not abate. So I set my timer for another 20 minutes. Keep in mind, I am in a parking lot, at 50 degrees outside, in the middle of Podunk Houston. So there's a thrum of anxiety just being there.
Even after a further 20 minutes, I could not bring myself to get out of the car. So much anxiety was going on in my head, I could not imagine. I was going to have another meltdown. There was no stopping it if I got out of the car and went into the bar. I even thought about giving my friends a hug, as touch is one of my primary love languages. And I knew, even with a hug from somebody that I love to, a close friend, I would be over stimulated, overwhelmed, and melt down. It hurt so much to drive away.
I let myself down, I let my friends down, even though I did not promise that I would be there. Sigh. I let everybody down. My brain is broken. I can't even go into a f****** bar. A f****** bar that I've been to 50 or more times. A bar that I know inside and out. With people that I know inside and out. The likelihood of there being any surprises, anything to trigger me, was low. Very low.
But I still could not do it. So, I looked up another bar that had karaoke on Wednesday nights. it was about 20 minutes away, 20 minutes out of my way, and 20 minutes further from home. I'd never been there, but I thought that perhaps going somewhere where I did not know anybody would be better. Then, there would be no real expectations of me. Perhaps that would be ideal. So I Drive. Things happen along the way, I miss a turn, my GPS signal is lost multiple times. Things that should not matter too much, but send somebody like me into a panic. Obviously, I'm not meant to go sing karaoke tonight. Obviously, I did something bad today, or yesterday, or last week that has made karma bite me in the ass. I finally reach the bar. It is a hole in the wall, it is on the end cap of a rundown strip mall. In the middle of a residential area, no less. The door is wide open, and it looks like it hasn't been updated in 20 years. I don't even think the bar is that old, but that's what it looks like to me. But now, I have begun to text a friend. A friend who lives close by to this new bar, who may or may not have wanted to show up. It did not matter, if I can get myself into the bar, I don't mind the company. I do not however want anyone relying on me inside. So she talked me down, and convinces me that I can go inside. It helped that I had rehearsed how I was planning to act, what I was planning to say, and the song I was planning to come up with for the entire drive.
The bar, as soon as I get inside, is half empty. Or so it seems. I sit at the empty half of the bar, and the bartender brings me my beer. Just as the bartender is handing me my beer, 3 girls show up from around the corner, deeper in the bar, and two boys. The three girls and one boy sit to the right of me, and the other boy hangs out on my left. I am now surrounded, crowded, and they're actually touching me. This is too much, & I very nearly had a panic attack immediately. This is not what I signed up for when I sat at a mostly empty bar. Not only that, but the bartender AND the guy sitting with the girls are hitting on them, hard. Flirting incessantly. I'm instantly self conscious, because nobody has flirted with me - not even a smile from the bartender who is probably my age. Suddenly, I am a horrible blob of disgusting, oozing fat that is taking up space and is better off gone. I'm obviously not pretty enough to acknowledge. And here I am, sitting here like I belong or some shit. Who did I think I was? Entering a bar, looking like I do? Fat. Ugly. Stupid. All because some chicks are being flirted with and I'm not.
Since the friend I'm talking to has been to this bar before, I asked her if there's anything in the back. She says yes, it gets bigger back there, and so I decided I am going to push through these people and go away. I snag my beer, turn on my stool, and stand up in one fluid motion that I practiced in my head no fewer than twelve times before I went through with it.
The back of the bar is also tiny. Being a fat girl, I judge distances and spaces before I enter them. I don't want to be stuck or caught unaware. All the tables are squished together, some chairs look sturdy and others look like they're gonna shred....ugh. I sit on a sturdy chair. I drink. I sign up for a song...oh, shit. Which song?!? Fuck. Fuck. I've used it as a warm-up song for literally three years....and I can't remember the name. Fuck. I am so stupid. The KJ looks it up by band name, and it still sounds foreign. My brain is so wiped tonight that a song I've sung thousands of times sounds like a foreign language......right.
It is so loud in here. My face is buried in my phone, and my ears are being stripped of all sense.
