Monday, Jun. 20, 2022 - 10:06 p.m.

It went that I was already so on edge and working so hard to do everything I was supposed to do and be as helpful as I could and in such a constant state of anxiety that J asked me to do one more thing to try to seem more helpful and I utterly lost it and he saw that I really couldn’t even and decided not to take his trip he was supposed to go on. Oh, I was a mess.

I won’t dwell on this, but it turns out that despite my thinking I was doing very well at being helpful, his parents thought I wasn’t even trying. That’s an old, recurring wound that gets opened up again every time I do group activity. I’ve been fired from jobs for that since I was 18 and I still can’t do any better.

I won’t go into the things that make me angry about it all and just say I’m grateful he decided to stay. He says I should probably disclose my autistic status to them, which they haven’t noticed despite my posting about it pretty freely on Facebook. I don’t really want to have that conversation but right now they’re judging me as they would someone who isn’t disabled in this particular way. I’m not used to thinking of myself as disabled, at all, but when I simply cannot do even with great effort the things that other people do effortlessly, then that shoe fits pretty well.

The change of plans and release of tension made me feel ok for half a day but I’m getting worked up again already.

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