Second times a charm (maybe)

Okay so today I’m going out for a meal so I decided now might be a good time to talk about something I absolutely hate.

Eating in public, or eating in front of another person. It can be anyone it doesn’t matter if it’s someone I just met or someone I’ve known since I was born, there’s nothing more embarrassing than having to eat in front of another person.

I’ve been this way for as long as I remember and I hate it. It’s caused me so much stress and anxiety throughout the years, imagine feeling like the worst thing possible is going to happen, a horrible feeling of impending doom, that’s how I feel when I have to eat in front of someone else.

Of course there’s exceptions to this, I can eat in front of my girlfriend most days but we spend almost every day together so if I didn’t eat in front of her I wouldn’t eat and I just want to be clear this isn’t part of an eating disorder, however I’m sure it could be classed as disordered eating 😂. If I eat with my girlfriend we have to have the TV on if possible and I don’t like to talk while we eat usually. If I have to eat in front of anyone else and I know about it ahead of time it’s major anxiety time.

Restaurants are pretty much my worst nightmare to be honest, I can’t imagine how sick my girlfriend probably is of asking for ‘a quiet table in the back please’ every time we go out to eat. I can’t begin to imagine how many restaurants I’ve had to leave because of there being ‘too many people’ and of course my brain loves to trick me into thinking that everyone in the place is staring at me and judging me when in actuality they’re just trying to enjoy their meal.

I hope I don’t sound too self absorbed because I know they aren’t really looking at me and I know no one cares whether I’m there or not to be honest but I can’t control it.

This is all on an average to bad day though, on a good day I’ll be able to go in a restaurant or eat in front of other people, I’ll still be cautious of how much I’m eating and how I look when I’m eating but I’ll be a little more comfortable, and I might even be able to order for myself if I’m feeling extra specially comfortable.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the gods for apps that allow you to order food, especially in restaurants. You’ve made my life so much easier and I know you did it just for me.

I feel like this post has been a little bit rambley and maybe I’ve missed the point I was trying to make but I’ve tried 😂.

Anyway today is going to be a good day!

Thank for reading x

Let’s get this show on the road… (an introduction?)

okay so I’ve decided to try and blog, it probably won’t go too well because  I get super embarrassed reading anything I write but it’s worth a go.

I guess I should introduce myself just incase anyone actually reads this. I’m Tasha (actually Natasha but no one ever calls me that really), I’m 20 (21 next week!), I’ve just moved house for the second time this year and I have two cats.

I’ve also recently been diagnosed as autistic.

One of the main reasons I decided to start blogging is so that I have somewhere that I can talk about my feelings, particularly about this recent diagnosis, because I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how I feel. Shocking, I know. At the moment I’m not really liking it, I spent the majority of my teenage years thinking I had a mental illness that could be made better by pills or some counselling and now I’ve been told that the reason I’m the way I am is because I’m on the spectrum. It’s good in the sense that I have a diagnosis so I can get the help I need however there’s no quick fix to make my life easy and that’s all I really want I think is an easy life. I have got mental health problems on top of this, like many people on the spectrum, however due to being autistic I’m just a little too ‘complex’ for your regular “and how does that make you feel?” Counselling unfortunately so I’m currently in about twenty different waiting lists. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m being a negative nancy because my life is so much better than it was this time last year and I’m really grateful for all of the help I’ve received I just wish everything wasn’t so hard but they do say life is hard don’t they? I wonder who they are, I bet they weren’t autistic.

Anyway today I watched a documentary on Netflix called Kingdom of us (highly recommend it! You’ll cry like a baby) it was about a family with seven children, six of whom are autistic, and how they cope with the death of their father. It was a tough watch but so worth it! It really made me think about a lot of different things, mainly how I’ve dealt with my diagnosis as well as how I deal with loss. The answer to both of those is not very well. I tend to just avoid anything that makes me uncomfortable or just refuse to face it.

My biggest fear is of the unknown, probably mostly of dying since there’s no way to know what happens after we die. My second biggest fear is spiders, or maybe just creepy crawlies in general. I hate being alone a lot of the time but it’s definitely made ten times worse by a huge eight legged beast taking up residence on my bedroom wall and not even offering to contribute to my council tax.

I’m going to try and be as honest as possible on here and hopefully people will read it or maybe hopefully they won’t. I’m not sure what I want to gain from this yet.

Basically to summarise this post:

• I generally have no idea what I’m doing
• My life is a mess
• I can’t keep a diary because I’ll read it and cringe as soon as I write it
• So here I am
• Thanks for reading