Overstimulated

I have always been outgoing. I’ve been called a social butterfly for as long as I can remember. I have a genuine love for people.
I also need time alone. Time to myself. Time to recuperate.

So, I guess two things are true. Because as much as I love people, I love time away from people. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember as well. I have memories from childhood of playing with my sisters, hearing the doorbell ring, and the neighborhood kids asking my parents if we could come out and play. My sisters would run outside but I would hang back and ask my parents if they would tell the neighbor kids that I couldn’t play today. Then I would sit alone in the backyard. I would pick flowers or just lay in the grass and look up at the sky for hours.

It’s not that I didn’t like playing with the other kids. I did. It’s that I had already played with my sisters and a break sounded nice.

When I got a little older and there were parties and social events, I would disappear for awhile. Usually to take a walk. Then I would come back, ready to mingle. 

Little breaks, I’ve found, are very important.

If I have that time to myself, I am happier to be around everyone.  

I can be present and enjoy it. 

But when I don’t have any breaks, no little moments away, something happens to me. 

My insides start to feel twisted and scrunchy. It gets hard to breathe and hot tears start to burn behind my eyes. I feel trapped by every conversation and every smile feels forced. I dream about jumping out of my skin and running as fast as I can until my body slows and my lungs explode and there is nothing left of me.

Dramatic, I know. But I don’t know how else to describe it.

It doesn’t happen often. But I’ve been ashamed of it nevertheless. 

It’s hard to allow myself to feel it (even though it demands to be felt) because it feels ridiculous. Why can’t I keep it together? Why do the walls feel like they’re closing in? Nothing bad has happened, I’ve just talked to too many people….? 

What the hell kind of a problem is that? 

It’s not a very understandable problem. Which is probably why I receive dumbfounded looks whenever I try to explain it.

Lately I’ve tried to be better about telling people what I need.

“Hey, I love you and I want to talk about that with you but right now I’m feeling overstimulated and I need to take a moment first”. Sometimes that goes well, other times it’s like they heard “overstimulation isn’t a real thing so please keep talking” and they keep going. Not knowing how hard it is to stand there. Not knowing that dream that’s running through my brain. And not knowing that I can’t hear words anymore. Their voice starts to sound like the adults from Peanuts. 

I know its an odd thing but that’s why I’m here talking about it. Maybe the more I talk about it, the less weird it will be. We are all incredibly different and we have different ways of interacting with the world around us. I don’t even need it to be understood, I just want it to be heard.
I want to hold space for the people around me and I want to get better at allowing them to hold space for me. I have a version of myself that I am comfortable sharing and I have one that I am uncomfortable sharing.

Both versions are me. 

Both of them making up who I am.

I’m working on loving them both.