Doing Too Much

Two days in a row of constant social activity is too much for me. I know this.

I need breaks; I need a chance to hide in the bedroom and not get out of bed. To pace myself, do what I can when I can, and not what I can't when everything's gotten to be too much. It's the only way that I can manage to do things at all - storing up the willpower and energy and spoons to get it done and then expending them all in one go. I know, full well, that doing too much is not good for me.

But I continue to do it anyway.

This last weekend, which was only the second time I'd been out of the house in the past horrible fortnight, I stepped beyond 'too much' and into the realms of 'this will break you'. On Friday night I saw my brother for the last time before he goes to France for six months; one of the first things he said to me was that he'd been to see dad on the way down, and I felt my brain smash into millions of pieces as I realised that I felt scared of my own brother just because he'd been near that man who was once my father and is now just an imposter wearing his skin.

We had a meal that was nice when I convinced myself not to break down and he went.

I tried to sleep, but was alone because my boyfriend was away. I don't sleep well. I never have done, but these days if I close my eyes all I can think about is how if I fall asleep I won't be cognisant and it will be like death and then I will think of how terrified I am of dying and the world will close in around me. I get to sleep because I can listen to him snoring and breathing and being alive and being there. It shouldn't really have surprised me that when he's not there, I don't sleep. At all. I suppose really it didn't surprise me, just disappointed.

So after tossing and turning for a night I got up and went to play LRP. It was a fun day, except I felt myself overcome by the mid-level and constant nagging feeling that no one likes me and I'm being an utter idiot. Nothing bad happened. I still felt like it. Being the entirely logical and sensible person that I am, I then went to the pub in the evening. Because cramming myself into the corner of a hugely busy room full of noisy and drunk people is totally the best thing to do.

I was doing okay, and then one of my dear friends who is wonderful and meant me not a single ounce of harm in any way whatsoever started talking about how someone we know frustrates him - and although he was talking about them all I could hear was you, it's you we hate and are annoyed by, and then it was like he was talking in my voice - the voice I use on myself. I asked him to stop talking. I burst into tears, and broke down like I hadn't done in front of my brother. I hid in my friend's arms so that I could pretend no one else was there and they weren't seeing me and judging and looking at the useless and weak and stupid mentally ill girl in the corner.

I couldn't get the words out to explain to my friend what was going on. He kept apologising. I couldn't summon the words to tell him that it wasn't him that had upset me, but it was me. He looked after me for the rest of the evening and made sure I got home safely and all I could think was I do not deserve any of this.

I went home and couldn't sleep again.

The next morning I ran an LRP adventure for eight of the most experienced roleplayers I know, including two of my best friends and a good deal of people who utterly terrify me because they are so very much cleverer and better than me. It was just me and a well-meaning but massively irritating 14-year-old. I felt the story I had written falling to pieces around me and everyone judging me and it all going utterly, utterly awfully. I forgot things, screwed things up, it was awful.

All of the players wouldn't stop telling me how good a day they had. I guess my perspective is screwed; but when I came home and finally saw my boyfriend I almost broke down again in front of everyone and it was all I could do to go to bed and log onto my MUD and pretend that absolutely nothing was wrong. (But my boyfriend knew. He can always tell even when I don't say).

I did, however, finally get some sleep - and I've managed to regain composure enough to write this (there's an irony there because I've only just noticed that I've been crying constantly whilst writing). What I wanted to say...well mostly I wanted to vent, I think, and to explain how too much is a relative thing - is that even though I know this weekend was horrendous and more than I could ever do, I will do exactly the same thing again.

Because I have to prove to the world that I'm not utterly broken, and I wish I could do that without just breaking myself more.