bated-breath.net

Ezrik has his first night of work tonight.  He’s been there for a few hours now, and I hope everything is going well.

It has, however, sent me into an overdrive state on doing things around the house and being domestic.  Several loads of laundry already done, dishwasher loaded and running, as well as cleaning up other odds and ends around the house…

… it also set me on the path to applying for food stamps and looking into Social Security Benefits because of my… disabilities? It’s hard to say that for me, it’s hard to admit that I am functionally disabled, but I kind of am in several ways.

My left eye is so bad that when my right eye is closed I can barely make out shapes anymore, let alone specifics, and the right eye is not nearly as good as it used to be.  Together they form a kind of mildly useful vision, but it’s not as good as it used to be, and it’s making situations more difficult than it ought to.  That, though, isn’t really much of an issue.  I can deal with that.  It’ll be hard to do fine details on things, but how often is that a problem in current work?

The real issue is the crippling social anxiety that I have that bursts me into panic attacks when I even go shopping in a store.  I zoom through as quickly and quietly as possible, flush red, get dehydrated, and generally grip the edge of the shopping cart like I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t.  It wasn’t always this bad, but I wasn’t always forced to make these kind of social interactions without the safety net of childhood being an excuse.

As an adult, I’ve gone from being just a shy little girl who wasn’t good at making friends, to someone who has to psych herself up for ten minutes to walk into a stylists and ask when they have an opening.  I’ve managed to make it so that I can – with some success – approach people for quick things like applications, quick information, or things like that… but asking for real help? Having to talk more than a few seconds? I fall apart.

Even writing about it has me tensing up, the idea that I really need to get over this, get out there, and make something of myself so I can help with the household – especially so Ezrik and I can get out on our own and he can feel some independence – has me running my tongue across the back of my teeth so frantically with each word I type that I’m afraid I’m going to run it raw again.

It’s not something I want to admit, because it means that I’m also going to have to try to get out there and get an interview about this even to get the benefits.  Having to talk to someone about why I’m messed up while having panic attacks over having to interact should be an easy way to show… but still.

My mom told me when I was visiting her this winter that the government said if I showed serious damage from what happened to me with being molested when I was four, that they would take care of me – I don’t know if this is true, but it might be my only way of getting through life with some sense of independence.  Honestly, I would love to hold a job, it’s an exciting prospect, but the day I get it, I’m so nervous to ask for any help or even help customers (I worked briefly at Wal-Mart and that was soul suckingly bad in the way that it’s a very personable job and I want to tuck my head down and not be seen.) kind of ruins the idea of being a good employee.

I don’t know if this will even work, and I understand that the process for getting benefits is long and will likely make me hate the idea of public interaction even more, but it has to be done.

It’s a weird thing to me, because even online where I have an easier time – because let’s be honest, you fuck up online, you log off and don’t show up for a while and usually it goes away – it still takes me a long time to be fully comfortable with someone… to get on Skype or have long conversations for hours on end.  Very rarely do people get into that bubble, especially now that I’ve been thrust upon the world – not independently, always supported in some way by someone else, but still – it has become an increasingly difficult problem to deal with.

We’ll see in the coming weeks just how fruitful this will be, but I might end up having to work a job I hate and deal with physically painful panic attacks for the sake of it.

I once said I think I could work in a field I’m passionate about, but getting jobs that involve music, gaming, or anything like that are really quite difficult when you’re almost 30 and have no experience.  To be fair, getting a job period is pretty difficult with those stats, but I digress.

Here’s hoping things work out.