An Unexpected Outing

On Saturday I ended up going out *gasp* to have dinner with my mum, brother, and his girlfriend. There was a big (by my definition, anyway) multi-family get-together on this weekend, which was far more than I can cope with right now, so we ended up doing a small dinner to catch up. Since both getting out of the house and having people in the house is so hard for me at the moment, this was the first time I'd seen her since we all went to Warrnambool for my birthday.

I spent most of the afternoon getting ready, I was so nervous. It was the first time I've worn make-up and proper clothes in months.

I wanted to leave early so we'd have time to go around the block looking for the closest car park. Unfortunately, it was still 100-200m away from the restaurant. It's further into town than I've been for years, and getting from car to restaurant was the hardest hundred meters I've ever walked.

We went out for Japanese. The funny thing is, none of us eat sushi and barely any seafood, but we all enjoy sharing the appetizers and meats and whatnot.
We got there fairly early, around 6, in hopes of beating the crowds, but it was still really busy for the first hour.

It took them forever to take our order, and it was 40 minutes before I even got my wine, which didn't particularly help. They didn't have the bottle I ordered, but didn't bother to say anything until the food started arriving. I nearly cheered once she found a Shiraz.

We ordered pork gyoza (dumplings), vegetable and seafood harumaki (spring rolls), yakitori (chicken skewers), tatsua age (fried chicken), tori no teriyaki (chicken) and gyu no teriyaki (eye fillet). We ate everything - plus four bowls of rice - except for four of the spring rolls. I ended up having one dumpling, one vegetable spring roll, a small piece of tatsua age, and some teriyaki beef with rice.

Not long after we got home, I ended up getting really sick. I'm honestly not sure why. I haven't had a drink in a couple of months, so I got pretty tipsy on just the half bottle, but I didn't think it'd make me puke. No one else got sick, so I don't think it was the food, and even though it was more than normal I didn't eat that much.

In either case, I woke up the next morning 0.7kg lighter. I nearly threw up again the next morning, and spent most of the day on the couch. The roof of my mouth is still hurting today. On top of my chest infection, I just feel sick and sweaty and yuck.


I don't know how to talk about it, but I ended up seeing my biggest trigger while we were out. The main reason I don't leave the house. I've just been feeling frozen since. I tried talking to the dietician about it this morning, but it was near impossible to get the words out. She knows who I saw. She said she was worried by how quiet and flat I was, but I just felt guilty for wasting her time. She even asked if there was anything at all I wanted to talk about, just to get it out, and I just said "I don't know".

Even when I do get out, it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress. I don't get more comfortable with it, and if anything, each outing makes me want to go out less. It's one step forward, two steps back. Maybe this is where professional support comes in. But still, my confidence is shot after this weekend.


And thank you all for your input on Duloxetine/SNRIs in general. It's really good to get input and opinions from people I know, people who've taken it, and not just from Google and my GP. Despite the initial worry, I think I'm actually more comfortable with this than some of the other antidepressants I've been trialled on in the past few years. Surely that's a good sign? I'm seeing my GP this Thursday, so I'm going to talk to her about my worried with SSRIs vs SNRIs (although Dr Sammy's comment was amazingly helpful).

On the bright side - pictures! Apologies for the spam, but this is only like the second time all year my ugly mug's looked presentable.

Gyu No Teriyaki

Tori No Teriyaki

Yakitori

Aaaaand, the next morning...

xxBella