#thel & the elderly 👵🏻👴🏻

[odi-et-amo85]

Today was my first day volunteering

edit: Please cheer me on as I struggle to cook dinner for myself! 🥹

I started doing volunteer work assisting with dinner at the local elderly home. For those who don’t know by backstory: I’ve been burnout for three years and recently (after a lot therapy, recuperating and practicing my day to day lifeskills) started with reintegration back to work (with which the municipality office for work and income helps me). Because of the autism, anxiety disorder and all the difficulties that come with that, I’ve been ambulatory counselled for the last six years. Initially for my university degree, the counselling went relatively great, until I got my BA English Lit and started a master’s programme. Fuelled by extreme performance anxiety (which spread into overall anxiety) and a too high dose of ritalin, I managed to hold on to the program for 1.5 years. Until I couldn’t anymore, in December 2019. Flash forward to now, after two years of COVID and a bonus year of existential dread, here I am, sort of back on my feet.

But back to the elderly. 👵🏻👴🏻 I’m mentally drained and very hungry, but otherwise doing great. 🥲 And apart from one lady asking if “I was a man or a woman” (short hair problems 😂) and later commenting I had “such lovely small eyes,” a minor language barrier with one lady who only spoke Czech, and a gentleman who couldn’t stop yelling, everything went smoothly. 😌

Now, I’m back home, really tired, but equally proud of myself. I don’t know to express this well. But this (actually going to an appointment with expectations, being there on time, and not getting a panic attack midway) is a gigantic step for me. A monumental event if you will. The first step on a long road of recovery. ❤️‍🩹