Lily visiting - retreat space / processing Aurilion w Lily / people staring / social anxiety spark
icon: "distance (two hands (from two people) just barely apart, facing each other palm to palm)"
So far having a houseguest (lilywolfsolomon) has been kinda nice- its a little hard to tell because the first week I was working on my last final and this week their mother is in town to visit them so they've been staying with them at their hotel.
I really love the idea of people being able to use my place as a retreat. I meant it when I said if you ever need a place to stay, you can come here. I can't meet any needs except space and internet, but those are easily sharable. I want to set things up better for guests though- after one mattress was sent to my lil sis and the other was thrown out, there isn't much bedding. Just one twin bed, the couch, and a short cushion (works for a kid or a fetal-position-sleeper). When I have some money I want to get an air mattress. Lily said they'd help me with some stuff around the house so I want to get that empty bedframe out of the guest room, get it tidied and pretty.
Aurilion just blocked me on facebook again, I'm guessing because of me giving Lily a place to stay. I am bemused. It's weird but good to have a chance to talk with someone who loves Aurilion perhaps even more than me, with such a similar experience. Makes me feel understood. And it's interesting. I had assumed this time Aurilion would be gone for years and perhaps forever, but something tells me that some big changes are coming their way. I have such empathy for Lily, the first time Aurilion cut contact with me it was fuckin awful and made me doubt my understanding of all things. Now it's just something I expect as an eventuality.
I had a weird experience the other day while out to dinner with Lily and their mom and their friend. I caught at least three people staring at me at different points. None of these stares were immediately after I did anything noticeable, I don't think (I may have laughed?). My first thought was about the spell I did recently to draw people to me, but none of the starers seemed like my kind of people. When I mentioned this to Topaz, I said "it may be just that I am suddenly noticing because meds allow me to take in more information" and Topaz was like, "yep." I said "whaddaya mean, 'yep'?" and they said that it is normal for people to stare at me. I find this really perplexing. It requires further testing for me to see if it's something good which I chose (the spell) or something irritating (normates treating me like a sideshow). I also had someone come up to me who was in a class with me years ago, who I was friends with on facebook for a while (I went through my emails to check) -- they expressed happiness to see me and said they liked what I said in the class. I felt soooo awkward not remembering them, and I wanted to give them my contact info but didn't -- until later, I got one of my cards out and called them over. I was quite proud of myself for overcoming the awkward to reach for connection, but now I feel super weird, because what if they blocked me on facebook or something? Oh well, I followed my intuition, yay me even if I was wrong. *cheers self* And Lily's friend, who I just met, also asked for my contact info, which I felt flattered by because 99% of the time I initiate connections.
Also, realized that a particular kind of social sets off my (now fairly rare) social anxiety. A group of fewer than 8, with more than one person whom I don't know well. It took a while to figure out because that situation almost always coincided with meeting a metamour or someone very important to someone I loved, and I thought "whoa, is this jealousy? why do I feel painfully overwhelmed?" Several times when I met Topaz' friends I got overwhelmed and had to go hide alone, because I was in a deep depression and just didn't have any energy to cope. Last weekend I was hanging out with Topaz and Adi and Jacob and Heather and Brian. Both Brian and Jacob I have only barely met a few times. I got really overwhelmed and disappeared into my phone a few times, but managed my anxiety well enough. Since I felt confident this wasn't jealousy, I finally realized what was causing this feeling. This situation makes me feel a pressure to perform, socially. If there is just one new person, then I can concentrate on them without worrying that others will feel slighted (because they know me), but if there is more than one, I feel completely all over the place because somehow I feel like I have to concentrate equally on everyone. I don't get it, but there it is. Ohhh, I just realized, it probably also has to do with leftover ex-partner stuff. In social situations I felt responsible for making sure they were comfortable, and now whenever anyone seems not-outgoing and maybe uncomfortable I feel impelled to try to put them at ease, and this is not possible with more than one person at a time. That's not all of it though because I also get overwhelmed by obviously-comfortable obviously-outgoing people if they are strangers in a small group with me. If there are going to be strangers, I like a group of three (including me) or 8+ where there is a majority of people I know. Weird, because the scary situation is often the case at my crafty parties, but I feel okay I think because I can throw myself into whatever I am creating and feel justified in not caretaking everyone because the point of the gathering is to create. I am glad I realized all this because now I won't feel guilty if such a situation is more than I can handle, and I will know what to watch out for and check myself to see if I have the energy reserves.
Also, I can tell that these meds are helping because when I forget them for a day everything falls to shit and I start forgetting the most obvious things. Today after forgetting my meds all day, I brought milk home and forgot to put it away for two hours. Luckily it was in a cooler with ice! *shakes head*