First of all, I am proud to announce I only had two meltdowns the whole of
camp and achieved 3 of my 4 goals, which I will hopefully manage to write
about later but not now because they are not relevant to this post.
[[read more]]
My first meltdown was the very first day of camp, which. I kind of was
expecting, in that unconsciously dreading sort of way.
I was so anxious about packing and getting there on time that I. uh. ended
up loading my car after I got off work at 1 AM and driving straight there
so I kind of arrived like 4 or 5 hours early. (That wasn’t so bad, I just
took a non-sleeping-kind-of-nap in the back of my car where all my bedding
was.)
Unfortunately, I kind of hadn’t slept in going on 36 hours? after a good
night’s sleep following a 48 hour not-sleeping-episode. So although I felt
fine, awesome even, I kind of worried myself when driving because I kind of
felt like I was driving a little erratically.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. But the lack of sleep almost
certainly contributed to the later meltdown.
I was initially really hesitant about going to camp because I am what you
might call a gold star introvert and am prone to meltdowns when overwhelmed
(I can see @persephonesidekick’s actuallyautistic face from here) so nine
days of being surrounded by people and away from my nice safe and comfy
bedroom was pretty scary.
People reassured me that I’d be able to find a quiet place to be alone when
I needed one, but I was still worried. I decided in the end to bring a tent
to sleep in and pay for a cabin bed just in case.
(I was also really worried about being comfortable enough to sleep as I
*hate* sleeping away from home, oh my god, just *hate* it, but
serendiptously my parents just replaced their mattress pad and gave me
their old pillowtop one, which is fucking amazing, jfc, even though
apparently my bed is a full and not a queen, oops, so I took basically my
bed with me and stuck it inside the tent, which turned out great for me in
terms of comfort but not so great for the pad itself in terms of ‘staying
clean and dry’ although it seems to have survived intact.)
(side note: apparently a tarp-beneath-the-tent in-case-of-rain is kind of
the opposite of helpful if you have the edges sticking out from under your
tent. on the plus side, mattress pad was so thick I never noticed the wet
until I took it out of the tent!)
(I put it on top of my car to dry, which worked pretty well, actually.)
People were really great about my needing to go hide (I disappeared fairly
regularly for a few hours in the afternoon or midday to take a nap) and
actually, all of my weird things, which was really cool.
There’s a lot of stuff I usually don’t do that I felt okay doing at camp -
carrying around a stuffed animal, rubbing it on my face when I wanted
distraction, chewing on my sleeve, coloring really really intently when I
felt out-of-my-depth oh-god-i-don’t-know-anyone, etc.
I hadn’t really realized how much those things helped me feel better,
whether I was in a stressful situation or not, so that was kind of cool.
(Carrying around the stuffed animal and the coloring book did sometimes
incited annoying (to me) comments about my ‘littleness’ but mostly people
just complimented my coloring or admired my stuffed dog and asked what his
name was, which was really nice.)
(People also just totally took it in stride if I talked about my stuffed
animals like they had feelings and stuff. Apparently a lot of kink scenes
are really sucktastic for Littles/Middles/Bigs, and apparently this one
wasn’t that great even not so long ago, so it’s kind of impressive a) how
many littles there were, all over the place, and b) how people just rolled
with it and generally treated them en masse as sort of camp mascots and
adorable terrors that were fun to tease.)
(I still don’t feel comfortable IDing as a Little because I just don’t feel
like the kind of experiences other people describe fit me at all. Sometimes
I do feel ‘littler’, in a way, but I never feel like I regress at all. I’m
pretty much always just me, just sometimes sillier or clingier than other
times.)
(People were also pretty good about accepting that, although I got some
teasing from Littles about my refusing to admit my littleness.)
(It was nice teasing, don’t worry.)
I originally was assigned to one of the farther away cabins along with some
staff I knew, but I really knew pretty much nobody in my cabin, which was
really anxiety-inducing, especially as I was cabin’ed with the sissies,
which. would have been a lot more comfortable for me if I had a) known any
of them and/or b) was certain at least some of them currently identified as
not-male. (I’m cool with cabin’ing with guys, don’t get me wrong, but not
*just* guys. I didn’t want to assume they ID’d as male in sissie-mode, but
I also was pretty sure they did ID as male a majority of the time, which
made me just a tad uncomfortable sharing a cabin with them, especially such
a CROWDED one, oh my god, no space at all so claustrophobic bad bad bad.)
(I really hope that’s not transphobic; it puts me slightly on edge when I
don’t know how someone identifies because what if I misgender them? how do
I categorize them mentally?? WHAT DO???)
(ugh maybe I’m a jerk. I hope not. I don’t know if it makes it better than
I’m pretty sure I would’ve just been anxious about the complete-strangers
thing if I knew for certain they ID’d as female.)
(although I also think the whole going by ‘sissy’ and ‘sissy slave’ titles
and service stuff would’ve made me a little uncomfortable. ykinmk?)
ANYWAY. so there was that, and then I could not for the life of me set up
my tent (it turns out it was big enough you needed more than one person)
and it was just way too much and I didn’t know who to ask for help and
didn’t want to bother anyone anyway and uh. ended up taking my grass
blanket and a stuffed animal behind a cabin and crying hysterically for an
hour.
There was then staring into space for another few hours as I tried to keep
the distant feeling which was keeping more meltdown at bay, and then
@persephonesidekick arrived at camp and I found her and she was amazing
because I was feeling so fragile and I couldn’t think and she helped me
talk to the lady in charge of the Littles’ cabin about switching to their
cabin since they still had space and all of a sudden like five people were
helping me move all of my stuff and set up my tent and it couldn’t have
taken more than twenty to thirty minutes all told before I was all moved in
into my little fortress of solitude.
(Bless every single person that helped. Seriously. And especially bless
@persephonesidekick for letting me follow her around like a shy little
shadow, not just that night but a few other nights too.)
Being up at the Littles’ cabin was great, because there were always people
around to talk to (or just listen to as they talked) but it never felt like
I *had* to socialize, just that I could if I wanted to.
(Also we watched Frozen, which was amazing and actually made me cry just a
little because motherfucking mentally ill disney princess, oh my god&;)
And that. kind of summarizes what I think the best part of camp was,
really. Not the specific experiences, although those were pretty awesome,
or at least really interesting, but just the *feel* of the place.
It didn’t feel like home, exactly, as others sometimes describe it, but it
felt *comfortable*, which is impressive for a place I’d never been before
with a lot of people I’ve never met. I felt *safe* and, I don’t know, cared
for?
A few times when I was upset, complete strangers would stop to ask if I was
okay and if there was anything they could do to help, and although I never
really took them up on it I’m pretty sure they would’ve tried to help me in
whatever way I needed. And when I was ‘driving Taxi’ (a camp chore where
you drive a golf cart from one end of camp to the other over and over again
to give people rides along the way) and realized halfway through that I was
starting to feel dizzy-headsick-bad and should probably switch out my other
Taxi shift for a different chore, the guy I mentioned it to in conversation
immediately flagged down a staff member and they took me off Taxi right
then and there, although I had fully intended to finish out my shift.
(considering how long it took me to get un-dizzy I think they might have
been right to do so. regardless, I appreciated it because I wouldn’t have
asked myself unless it had gotten a whole lot worse.)
Wow, this whole thing is getting kind of incoherent and unorganized; sorry
about that. Unfortunately, the read more I’m putting on this may or may not
work because posting-by-email is the &;worst&; jfc, so I’m sorry if it spams
your dash.
hashtag camp camp camp
hashtag kink for kate’s bls i guess?
hashtag mkp in real life
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