This week’s blog post is going to be short because I’m tired. Too tired to write and too tired to think. I’m in recovery from too much peopling.
Any outing these days is a pretty big deal for me, and this week I took a big leap: I went to a wedding — and now I’m paying for it. Six hours of preparation, 4 hours of driving (there and back), and 5 hours of peopling … I am physically and emotionally spent. I’m glad I went (for real), but now I need to rest.
This probably seems extreme and rather diva-ish. It’s not like it was my wedding, or that I got hammered and am still nursing a wicked hangover. [I stopped drinking almost 10 years ago.] But as someone with an autoimmune disease, leaving the house for even a day trip requires hours of planning and preparation, which takes a toll. Thanks to my vast food allergies and complicated medication protocol, there are no spontaneous outings in my world. It’s just too challenging, and a lack of planning usually leads to days of suffering. I’m not taking that chance.
Plus, as a woman of a certain age, there was a certain amount of pre-event “maintenance” that needed to happen to appear presentable. Like shaving my legs, applying fake tanner, and getting my roots touched up because I’d like to say I’ve embraced this part of aging, but having gray hair just makes me look old and shaggy. And because I’m not happy with the current state of my body, finding an appropriate dress that both hid my medically-necessary compression stockings (glamorous, I know) and didn’t make me look like the size of three (as my grandma would say) was another challenge that took a bigger emotional toll than I should probably admit.
As if that wasn’t enough, then there’s the anxiety of being at the event itself. If you’re new here, you may not know that I’m a highly introverted person who manages social and general anxiety on the daily, and is currently fully engulfed in a sea of shame around my present physical appearance. I almost backed out a dozen times in the days leading up to the wedding. But I wanted to go, for the bride and groom’s sake. So I put on my big girl panties (literally and figuratively), channeled my inner badass (while practicing my deep breathing exercises), and went.
Overall, I think I did okay. Sure, I was self-conscious and uncomfortable, and I may have word-vomited and overshared with the first lovely couple I awkwardly made small talk with before other guests arrived (we were surprisingly early, which is NEVER the case), but I did it. I even danced and laughed — before sneaking out earlier than anyone else we knew. I wasn’t the life of the party, but I also didn’t die of embarrassment or have an anxiety attack, so I’m calling it a win.
Now, I need a nap and lots of alone time to recharge. Unfortunately, I still have a family — and a full construction crew — at home with me, so this will be interesting. Wish them me luck!
-LJDT
