Super social day today. First, I interviewed for a job in an unknown neighborhood. I had to take a bus I had never taken before, at a stop that I had never waited at, and ride it full of people (including a bunch of teenage kids) that were doing stupid shit like sitting in the back stairwell and making people wait each time while they got up so people could leave the bus. Then i got there and waited almost an hour for an interview (more social!) and did an interview (social, with rules - actually not as bad as other situations because i have a decent idea of the script) and then another interview with a higher up, and then was taking the crowded bus back home.
i went out to a queer BDSM event after this - not actual play, but a discussion/demo. new people, but i was happy during the discussion - lots of laughter and fun and talking about sensation, and i was engaged in that. then came some awkwardness navigating playing with my friends (nothing serious, just some swatting/punching, and then logistics, and then it all went to hell when we got to the restaurant.
i tried to explain later - there are rules for every social interaction. When I'm ordering at a counter, I step back, look at the menu, get in line, commit to a choice by the time I get to the counter, and I know exactly what I'm going to order. I recite my order to the counter person, pay for the food, and step to the side to wait.
My friend wanted us to order together. I wasn't ready - I needed a few more seconds, and I had budgeted that time to occur while my friend ordered and paid. My friend insisted on ordering together, and said if I wasn't ready that I could step aside, let the person behind me order, and then resume my place in line. I couldn't handle the idea of having to socially navigate my way back into the front of the line. I either had to order right then, or go to the back. My friend got mad at me for "making things complicated," but they weren't complicated. They were simple. My friend would order. Then I would order.
Of course, the line behind me was huge, and so I just gave up and sat myself down in a corner of the table where my group was and waited for it to die down. My friends kept asking me questions about logistics and was I comfortable and did I order yet, etc. and it all sounded like static. I was flustered, the day had been long and social and I had been so good, and I was just done handling decisions. I had an internal meltdown and squeezed as far into the corner as I could.
Finally, the line died down and I stood back up and got on it, and ordered my food in peace. Because I wasn't in that crush of people, I even got a little placard with a number on it, so I would know precisely when my order was ready. When I got back to my table, my friend had taken the corner seat, and I was irritated, but at this point couldn't even explain why. Besides, there were people there who I wanted to get to know who were not my friends, and I didn't want to try to explain my feelings in front of them.
When I got home that night, I tried to explain how disconcerting the restaurant was to my friend. (We're also housemates and former partners, so we have a long history, but stuff like this is what we've clashed over before, and I used to lack the words to explain how I felt.) My friend countered that me wanting to order food by myself felt very isolating. I got frustrated and tried to explain that it wasn't a personal slight - I had routines for all of the things I do each day in my head, and when they get disrupted, it throws me off and makes it hard to make decisions after that. I can order with people in restaurants if it is a situation that warrants it (table service, or prior agreement to order as a group), but when I have prepared myself for a certain situation and it changes, I get flustered, particularly when my energy is already running low.
We drove across the country together, and we had plenty of moments where I had to make a snap decision and took the longer way to do something. For example, if I made a wrong turn, I was hesitant about making a U-turn on an unfamiliar road, so I would want to find a suitable turn to get me going back in the right direction. As driveways came by in a flash, I would hesitate - was this a private driveway? Was somebody going to get mad if I used it to pull around? Was it a business that had traffic going both ways out of the driveway? If I wasn't sure, I would go past it. Sometimes it would be more than a mile before I found a pull off that I felt comfortable using. This would understandably agitate my friend, as would my stream-of-consciousness talking myself through it, which would sound like stressed rambling to most ears.
I never said that I was fun all of the time.
But if I can control my surroundings, if I can keep myself in comfortable conditions, a lot of those qualities disappear, and I can be happy and witty and conversant. (Granted, that comfort level with people often takes several *years.*
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