Took a Xanax last night for the anxiety. I realized a couple of things afterwards. First, I think I've been subconsciously masking again, which is leading me back to the strong feelings of burnout that I had been learning to deal with. I've been having to take them more often, which for me means one every couple of weeks when the anxiety gets too bad to handle. I had been moving past that, but I'm falling backwards now.
The second thing, which is more just something I find interesting, is that I start to feel numb when it gets bad. I've been trying to sit in my emotions, to experience them... to feel them. I've been trying to allow myself to feel. This most often happens with music. Lately I haven't felt much. But just now, post Xanax, I felt myself tearing up to my music.
The lesson? I need to allow myself to be autistic. Never mind what my government is trying to do to us... Trying to put the mask back on is going to kill me. I need to stop caring what it looks like, what people think about me, about all of that crap.