I wrote something while calming down from sensory overload and a crazy anxious day

It's weird how sensory overload eventually evens out. It's horrible and awful and makes you want to scream and curl into a ball and shut down for a while but after it fades out and you're wrapped up in your blanket and your breathing is back to normal, then... things are okay. That's where I am now. Sitting in a corner of my room, blanket around my legs, a coat on, background sound in my earbuds, and right now I think I'm okay.

Not that I like the process of getting here. Going through sensory overload is no fun at all, and very few things are worth it, but once you've expended all your bad feelings and all your stress and all your fear... you're left a little emptier, a little freer, a little lighter. And that, that's an okay thing to feel. There's a sort of peace that comes with calming down and saying “Hey, I'm okay now. I'm okay, this is okay. Everything is fine now.”. It's worth getting through the overload for the aftermath, the feeling of empty peace that comes with just being out of bad feelings to let out.

Sure, it doesn't last too long. Things come back in eventually, life returns to normal. Overload could happen again. But to me at least, it's a comforting thought that in this, the world pays you back. You suffer for a while, but in exchange for that suffering, you get some peace and calm and quiet okayness. I don't know about anyone else, but that makes it a little easier to deal with overload. The world paid its debt. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.