New Experiences And A Touch Of Social Anxiety

Hello readers! I feel so weird now that I'm not daily blogging. I don't like this feeling... Hmm...

So I decided to write this post because yesterday, I had a great day which was full of new experiences and I wanted to tell you all about it.

So yesterday, my cousin invited me out to a play that was being produced by one of his old school friends. It was called 'The Beaux Stratagem" and it was hilarious and classic and really wonderfully done in my opinion. I was really impressed. I loved how they strung their words together to form something so elaborate and extravagant. The actors were all so confident and loud. It was extremely well put together and I enjoyed myself tremendously. So well done to the cast and crew!

After that, my cousin surprised me by bring me to the Fullerton Bay Hotel. We went up to the Lantern bar. He bought me a Gunner (it's a mocktail that's made up of ginger ale and some other stuff. Overall it was extremely tasty). He had a cocktail drink that was full of mint leaves. I thought his drink tasted 'leafy'.

We just chilled out at the bar for a bit. The view was absolutely spectacular. I can't even describe it properly. You had to be there to see how lovely the city skyline was. In this instance, pictures do not speak a thousand words.

While we were there, my aunt and uncle surprised us. They came along and had drinks with us. Then they took us to Pasta Brava for dinner. Pasta Brava is an Italian restaurant which they frequent very often. Everyone was so nice especially to me because I was the new face at the table.

We had Portobello mushrooms and ravioli for appetisers. I had seafood linguini for my main and we shared a crêpe and a tiramisu for dessert. We had really nice wine too and we did limoncello shots together. It was amazing. It was my first time doing a limoncello shot (or any shot for that matter) so that was an interesting experience. (I would later find out that it made me really tired and that night, I woke up disorientated at 5am but that might not have been because of the shot)

Overall it was a wonderful and amazing day. It was very overwhelming. I've never been to a place where a drink costs 20 bucks. I tried ravioli for the first time. I did my first shot. It was really a lovely experience and I'm glad that I put myself out there and did all this. 

When my cousin first called me to invite me for the play, honestly, the first thing that came to my mind was, "Why me? Did he have no one else better to take?". That was my instinctive reaction to his invite even though I know that my cousin and I love spending time together and that he and I are pretty much siblings. I instinctively assumed that my company was horrible.

I hated that I felt that way. On Saturday, I was very careful when I picked my outfit. I made extra effort and I even did a little something special with my hair. Yet the second I got there, I started to feel ugly and fat. I felt out of place and I had this horrible fear in the pit of my stomach. I don't know where it came from but I know that I was no stranger to it.

I frequently experience this. This almost crippling fear that I look horrible, that I might say the wrong thing, that I might embarrass myself. It's always when I find myself with people that are not in my household. It's why I don't really go out much and why I prefer to stay at home, holed up in my room, typing up what I feel to post on my blog. I struggle with social interaction. Especially one-on-one interactions. 

It didn't matter that it was just my cousin with whom I had grown up with. It didn't matter that I was with my closest aunt and uncle whom with I spend time with every week. I still felt crippled. If I wasn't busy being overwhelmed by everything, I might have started to panic. I don't know. I mean, yesterday was a really lovely day. Yet internally, I just felt so strange and a little tipped on one side, if you know what I mean. 

I hate feeling like that. Like I'm somehow not up to a standard that I think I should be at. A standard which, by the way, is pretty unattainable. I think I've mentioned before that I am my biggest critic. I guess this is a pretty big personal stumbling block for me. I don't know. I'm rambling. 

It's late and I want to sleep more then anything. I've got exciting posts coming up. I got a new camera yesterday too and I will review it once I feel like I know it well enough. So don't forget to subscribe by typing in your email address in the box in the side bar to get an email when I post something!

Love you loads!

Panic Attacks

Do you ever start to panic? I mean really panic. When you start to feel really cold. When you know deep down in the pit of your stomach that something is not just situationally wrong, but emotionally wrong? When everything suddenly seems to cave in on you. When your heart starts to race and when you feel like you're in a bubble all alone. When you start to hyperventilate. When all you want to do is to crawl into a tiny tiny space and cry. When you suddenly become hyperaware of every single thing around you and you can't take the overload on your senses. When you start to shake and you can't stop it. When nothing seems right.

It's called a panic attack.

I personally have experienced this more times then I care to remember. It's a scary feeling honestly. My latest one was in my school's library. We had to print out our project that we've been working on for 5 months and present it. And everything that could have gone wrong was going wrong. We were late for class along with other groups from our class and I started to panic. No one knew though. 

In the middle of the printing room, I suddenly lapsed into silence. I moved to stand behind my friends and let the panic take me. You never really know that you're having a panic attack until you're in the middle of one or even only after you've calmed down. My heart started speeding up and I started shaking. I felt like throwing up. I stood there next to my friends in silence for a while and then I had to walk away from them. I walked away, tried to breathe a bit and then walked back. I did this a few times. I ended up snapping at one of my friends because she told me to stop tapping the table. I was tapping the table to count my breaths and to try to calm down but she didn't know that so it's not her fault.

I eventually completely walked away from them and I texted my mom asking her to call me because I wasn't sure if she was teaching or driving. Thankfully she called me back immediately. She spoke to me for a bit just calming me down and telling me to breathe and relax. Mostly it was her voice that calmed me down. After I got off the phone, things started to look up and by the time we got to class and had to present, I was calm enough. The panic attack had passed. I only realised that it was a panic attack while I was on the phone with my mom which was interesting.