Aaaaaaggggghhhhhh!

That pretty much sums up how I feel at the moment. I'm coming down from being on the verge of a panic attack, and I'm frustrated with myself to boot because of it, even though I know it's probably a brain chemistry or neural thing, I still feel like somehow I'm just defective. It's like my brain glitched and suddenly I could not tolerate sounds or light or people or any of the relatively normal things around me. I have problems with integrating my senses sometimes. If a TV is on in one room and someone's talking and there's sound in another I have a really hard time picking out just that person's speech and paying attention. Add, say, a radio in the other room and it blows my concentration all to hell.

Today I think I was already a little oversensitive. The nursing students were loudly twittering in that gossipy way that young women do when I came in, discussing their teachers and who was married, and who was not. Still, I got a lot of work done. I didn't really have much trouble until I went to lunch, where everything started to irritate me. One man kept circling around me like a fly being super-careful to keep his space in line whilst filling his salad plate, etc., then waiting impatiently as I fixed a sandwich (I had to tell him to go around me). When I sat down the room was cold (whose idea was it to lock the thermostat at 59 degrees??!) and crowded but we were okay at our table. But more and more people kept coming. One girl had to move her things because a patient had an accident right next to her, and as she was cleaning up someone sat down and moved her chair right into it. Someone else burst out really loudly right behind me as she tried to grab someone's attention. I took my tray up to make room and someone else sat down in my seat even though Dwana told him I was sitting there. Suddenly instead of four or five people at a table we were eight or nine, and I was starting to feel panicky and claustrophobic and agoraphobic and whatever else. So I excused myself and Dwana did too, and we went to her office for just a bit and someone fired up a floor cleaner at full throttle. I came back to my office, turned the lights out over my desk and in the family resource room, and just sat in quiet for a few minutes, and I started to feel better. But although I didn't totally go to pieces, I feel like it inside. Crazy? No, just a little unwell. :)

Dwana checked up on me a little later and I was feeling better. My heart rate's back to normal now, at least. Call it social anxiety, sesory integration dysfunction, whatever, it sucks. Fortunately I'm usually better at tolerating distress than that.

I think part of the problem, too was that I felt sort of cast aside at lunch, emotionally, with my place being taken, and I sort of feel that way about work in general. And I really, really am tired of people asking how the reduction in hours is going when it doesn't even happen for another week and a half. Although I'm glad they care, I also know they just don't understand that I can't just make those hours up with another part-time job easily, at least that will pay equally, so I probably will be leaving. And although I realise it might be a very good thing to go through the change, it's not easy, and at the same time, I don't want to seem like there's no problem, because the whole situation really does rather suck.

Argh.

Enough of this. I'm tired of feeling sucky. At least writing about it does help. And Dwana, at least, understands. At least we'll still be working about the same time, and even if I have to find another job, we'll still see each other. :)