Empty Room Thoughts
It’s official: My mom and Bob and the movers got all my stuff settled into my new house (yes, it’s an apartment. Yes, I call it a house. Where I live = my house, k? Good). So I write to you from the family room at home (The new house isn’t home yet.), minus most of its furniture. I’m at the card table with a rickety wooden chair. My bedroom has my bed (I took the spare room’s double instead of my queen, as the new house has small rooms) and my desk, and that’s it. It shall be strange until I get moved over… then, it will be stranger.
Anyway, I didn’t expect to go to a wedding and learn about myself, but that’s sort of what happened. In no particular order…
– Although my emotions are often confusing to myself and the people closest to me, they can also be totally and completely normal. I got teary at the wedding, just like a bunch of other people.
– A weekend with Leigh encourages and refreshes me like few things do. I believe that being myself, as God created me to be, is the reason for this. I feel this way during worship, with my mom, and with Leigh, and pretty sure nowhere else.
– I’m out of practice for being around my peers. This means that I stand out more than I used to. I think that my world has become so small now that I’m not in college that I’ve forgotten how to “fake it” around my peers. While the girls (Leigh, her college roommate, and a college friend of theirs) hung out and had a drink or two and did I don’t know what, I completely tuned out and read the new Jodi Picoult book in which the main character has Asperger’s (for the record, it’s… decent, but not fantastic), all 542 pages of it, in one evening. I couldn’t even follow their conversation, let alone join in.
– Lack of sleep causes melt downs, just like it used to. I don’t think I’ve been truly short on sleep since I graduated, until this past Friday. I went to bed at 2 AM and got up at 4 AM to get on the bus, and I couldn’t get comfortable on the bus to sleep, so I was exhausted by the time we got to the hotel. I skipped my Geodon, which could have something to do with it, but Walmart made me feel sick, and then the prospect of people coming over and being noisy made me start to cry. But I tuned out sufficiently and held it together and went to bed by 10 PM.
– It’s a bad idea for me to go places by myself. I leave my wallet at the counter in the Macy’s (Leigh grabbed it), leave my phone on the stack of puzzles in the Target (several weeks ago, but my aunt grabbed it), and leave my purse in the dressing rooms. I’m so overwhelmed by lights and sounds and movement that I can’t keep track of myself at all. I also get lost easily, which means that crying ensues. And I mean lost as in, if I walk out of the hotel room to go get a soda or ice, as I did once in Disney World, it might take me 2 1/2 hours to find my way back, which that time, it did.
Anyway, the wedding was beautiful (brown and gold with lots of sunflowers), and I’m glad I went. Next wedding is in town on the 21st (next Saturday) for my “other half” from camp growing up. She is marrying our former camp counselor who she has loved since she was a little girl. It’s a fairy tale! Not so stressful this time because 1. it’s in town and 2. Mom will come. Although I must say, I felt much safer and more sure of myself than I thought I would after being away from Leigh for so long.
A wonderful weekend, a beautiful wedding, the best of friends, and now home to my kitty. Can’t ask for more than that.
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One simple way to not forget things like your wallet or your phone is to make a rule for yourself, “Never put them down except where they belong.” My phone ALWAYS goes in my back pocket or in it’s case on my purse if I don’t have pockets… even if I only need to be free of it for a second. I do not set it down anywhere else until I get home where I plug it in every night. My wallet goes in my purse the second I’m done with it. I simply do not allow myself to set it down anywhere else. My keys go on my beltloop or on my purse, nowhere else.
As far as getting lost goes… I still have trouble with driving in unfamiliar places at night, I pretty much simply won’t do it unless I absolutely HAVE to… wanting to has not yet made me do it. GPS on my phone helps a lot. Getting lost while walking places… well… I’ve kinda learned to purposefully spend time just wandering around in places where I intend to have to go back to get things I need. A lot of it is just taking time when you don’t NEED anything in particular, just to get familiar with a place.
I have the layout of the grocery store memorized… and can practically tell you what shelf on which aisle to find whatever it is I’m looking for. Walmart on the other hand, just went through renovations after the flood… so it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me and I haven’t had time to go wandering yet.