Shul, and the Terrible Allure of Pity Parties

My mood over Shabbat (the Sabbath) was not as low as I feared, although it did dip at times. Friday night was mostly OK. I went to shul (synagogue) and we did Kabbalat Shabbat outside as normal so we could sing. I overslept this morning also as normal and dozed for a bit after lunch too, which made me late for shul for Minchah (Afternoon Prayers). This is awkward, as we were praying outdoors again and the only way to get to the seats was to walk in front of the makeshift bimah (the table where the service is led from), which isn’t really consider the proper shul etiquette. Also, the only seat free was right down the front, which increased my feeling of being painfully conspicuous.

Social anxiety plays a big part in my oversleeping on Shabbat. I haven’t been to shul for Shacharit (Morning Prayers) more than a few times in the last couple of years, and I’m sure I oversleep because if I wake up, I have to confront my social anxiety about going. Similarly, I struggled with social anxiety again this afternoon. Some of it is probably feeling I don’t fit in to my shul, but a lot of it is fear of getting an aliyah (being called to say the blessings over the Torah or otherwise get involved with the Torah reading), which is why I don’t get it on Friday nights to anything like the same extent. I’ve had an aliyah loads of times, but I still worry about it. I get flustered and do the wrong things, I worry I will start shaking and I generally feel conspicuous. I really don’t like it, but it’s considered an honour and you can’t really decline it.

I sat through Talmud shiur although I’m not sure how much I understood, even having prepared on Friday night. By the time I got home, I was getting a headache; I did a little Torah study and read a bit (Vampire Romance is a novella included in Anno Dracula 1918: The Bloody Red Baron — if The Bloody Red Baron is “Biggles with vampires,” Vampire Romance is a blend of P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie with vampires, and it’s a lot more fun). Eventually my headache got too bad to read, although it responded quickly to medication after Shabbat.

Something that was at the back of mind, and sometimes at the front (where it shouldn’t have been) during Shabbat was my idea to email the Intimate Judaism people to speak to them about my circumstances and see if they have any suggestions. I do want to formulate one or two actual questions; I don’t want to just write a self-pitying email. I don’t think anyone still reading this used to read my comments on Hevria.com, but I used to write these enormous “pity party” comments about my depression, social anxiety and loneliness (I can’t remember whether autism was on my radar at the time). The silly thing was that I used to convince myself that they were relevant and responding to the articles in a meaningful way. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t get banned from the site. Eventually I started this blog and drifted away from Hevria for various reasons. Anyway, I don’t want to do that again, tempting though it is to just offload my issues on people (which I suppose I do here).