I really need to make more friends, the only one or two I have to talk with are unavailable for the next couple days.

Partner had been looking forward to going to this dance for some weeks at least. I felt anxious about it, but we'd been last year and had a decently fun time; I managed to get psyched up enough to do some dancing and that was super fun.

I said okay to the dance last week, felt unsure about it, but figured I'd be happy to go and would get into it. Got dressed and ready and everything, but quickly felt progressively worse and more anxious every minute of the half hour drive there.

We arrived, my partner checked in with me and I said I'd survive. We went in, partner said their hellos, and we sat down at a table for a bit. Music soon got too loud for me to able to have any kind of conversation (which overloads and annoys me at every party ever). After about ten minutes I felt so indescribably horrible and unhappy that I was really struggling, but resolved to calmly just sit about until I felt better.

Then the dancing began, my partner urged us to go up and dance. I just shook my head saying "I can't." - It's not like I even felt nervous, I just felt absolutely unable, I felt like my world had gone dark and I just couldn't move, everything felt so wrong. After she urged a couple more times, I sat still in this dance hall, music blaring, and I just started weeping - Trying to still mask, I sat still and looked into the distance, hoping it would pass and I'd be okay, but as soon as other people started noticing, I got up and left the hall.

I sat by the car and just bawled my eyes out like no fucking tomorrow. I don't think I've cried so helplessly since I was a fucking child. I felt so deeply, irreparably sad that I couldn't join in, that I was disappointing my partner, that I was doing worse than last year somehow, that I've lived my whole life feeling so fucking unable to do things that many others normally manage, even if it's sometimes a struggle.

I really cannot remember the last time I felt so unable to stop bawling my eyes out.

Partner came by, reassured me, we went back and relaxed to bed with a podcast. They did great, but fuck. Today was supposed to be a fun party, we went about town and had cake and had a theoretically nice time, now I'm back home on my own and able to mourn the shit out of yesterday.

But my existence right now feels weighed down to the bottom of the ocean with the guilt of being unable to do a simple thing like go to a fucking dance with my partner, with the lifelong shame of feeling so unable to do this shit. And with the confused frustration that I'm somehow doing worse than I was last year - I thought I was getting better at this..

I don't even fucking know why I struggled so much, I simply don't fucking know. I feel traumatized, I fear I'm going to look back at this day for the next 10 years and cringe with shame.

I've not had real suicidal ideation for some time, maybe a couple years, but today is really a struggle. Today I feel like an unlovable failure.

I'm gonna eat my party cake, curl into a ball and play a couple games, see if I can get a friend to join. Never has described me so well.