On the outer edge of coping.

It’s been one of those horror weeks. My birthday was Friday just gone, and I am still recovering.

But that was almost a week ago now, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t you be all good now? Yes–and cue that intense sense of shame that I, a grown woman, am still struggling to function so many days later. It isn’t the alcohol that does me in, I wish it was–that would be so simple to fix. Don’t drink, recover fast. My alcohol hangover lasted only into the Sunday afternoon.

The rest of it I’m still wrestling with.

I did an enormous amount of hours at work in the two weeks prior, more than I’ve done in a long time. Organising the party was more stressful than I’d like to admit, they always are. I don’t know if I’ll bother again. I’ve got nine years before I have to start thinking about whether to have a 40th or not, maybe I’ll feel different then. Maybe I’ll be different then.

It’s unlikely. I was always that kid concerned that no one would show up to her birthday party. I get very worried that I’m not enough, not important enough that anyone will want to. Then I make mistakes like inviting the sorts of people that I want to connect with, and get crushed when they decline. I really don’t know how else to communicate with people that I’d like to know them better, outside of work or other social groups. I don’t know how to indicate that I want to be friends, so this is my way. I invite them along and hope they’re also interested in knowing me better.

And I should know better than that by now, but I don’t and all the same mistakes were made. I had a very good night in the end, and the quality of those who turned up for me was fantastic. Still, it’s just as well that I got merry enough before the end of the night to notice the absence of a few people who I’d been very excited to party with.

Because that is my other problem, I never seem to know the difference between someone accepting to be polite, and those who genuinely intend to come. They all make the same sounds and I get equally as excited. Then the moment comes and I’m confused. Why do people do that? Why do they make plans they don’t intend to keep? How is it more polite to leave me hanging, than to decline?

I don’t know, but the whole affair is stressful. I know people have lives well outside of my little party, and the apologies I could understand. None of my attempts to widen my social circle were accepted, though, and every decline there felt like a slap in the face. All of these were people with whom I had discussed socialising with before. Nothing ever came of it. Nothing ever does. I go home after these discussions excited that maybe I’ll be invited out, but it never happens—I see the photos pop up on Facebook and wonder again: why do people talk like they want to make plans, and then leave me out?

The only reasons I can ever come up with is I am forgettable, unimportant or just a burden to have around. Not fun.

So that cycle plagued me, the deep sense of insecurity that almost everyone invited was not my friend by choice, but someone who I had tagged onto through my family. That I wasn’t able to generate my own party crowd, because the people I know here in town aren’t interested in socialising with me. It’s a heavy feeling, and thankfully one that was offset by being surrounded by truly wonderful people on the day.

It’s no wonder that with weeks of that, by the time the excitement died on Sunday I was destroyed. I’ve been clenching my teeth a lot, my whole face aches from it. I had panic attacks more intense than any I’ve had in a long time on Monday, lost my sense of time and became completely convinced that the overnight shift I’d signed up for was next week–and it wasn’t. This I didn’t realise until it was too late, and thus began the next spiral.

How was it that I could still be this confused, overwhelmed, and tired after just a birthday party? Not just the next day, but for two days after? I felt like an absolute failure as an adult, a failure in my menial retail jobs, and any hope I had of returning to full time professional work was now a knife that stabbed into my self esteem. Will I ever be able to do the sort of work I want to do?

I don’t hate retail, but if I’m going to spend my life working then recovering from work, the work should be something that at least satisfies me. I have to devote my energy to work, there’s no choice there–I need to pay rent. It just seems to be the same endless cycle of the same to go home, sleep, collect enough money to pay rent, and repeat. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but my one hope is that I will find a job that is worth that sort of energy. But–if I don’t even feel like I’m managing retail, then how?

I already got fired once this year for not coping with the demand of a professional job. I want so badly to believe I’m capable. That I don’t have to live in this cycle forever. That I can find something that makes me feel like a success, and not a barely-scraping-by pile of shit.

Reality is a bitch.

Right now, everything is too loud. I want to watch TV but the sound screams on the lowest volume. I went to the supermarket and came out shaking, even though I kept my sunglasses on while I was in the store.

My doctor would say I pushed myself too hard, did too much work too suddenly. But what option do I have?

I’m just trying to keep up here. I know it will get better, because everything was fine two weeks ago. Maybe I just got so excited about that feeling of coping that I really did just run myself straight into the ground. Even though I did far less than my sister does in an average week, here I am struggling to function. Feeling somewhere between nauseous and tears, wishing that I could just stop the world for five minutes and catch my breath.

Hating myself because I can’t seem to keep up, no matter how hard I try. I do alright for a while, and then this–I hit the wall. I crash.

I’m on the outer edge of coping. Not drowning, but nor am I swimming confidently. Getting through one minute to the next, building up strength to run headlong into the next wall. That’s how I do.