Played music in a restaurant

[GirlInTheHi-Tops]

I don't really know people here, so this won't be as exciting to you as it is to me, but I'm finally proud of myself for something and feel like sharing it.
So. I know it's kind of silly, but I am really unable to deal with restaurants. I have social anxiety and they're just majorly terrifying to me. As in, a good day is when I sit there unable to talk and knitting too fast to eat, and a bad day means I wind up locked in the bathroom feeling like I can't breathe and trying to cut myself on the paper towel thing. So, not fun.
My flute teacher plays informally at this bar-style place every week with a band and he's always inviting me to join him. Playing music in front of people is also a big no-no for my mental health, especially as they typically don't use sheet music at these things, so I never have.
Well, today is my brother's last day before going back to college, so we went out to dinner, and I stuck my pennywhistle in my bag so that my mom would get off my back about it (she's kind of annoyed at me for being all neurotic about things). It was really loud and kind of dim in there, so my "panic meter" was going off a bit from the minute I walked in, but I just tried to keep breathing and told myself to get over it.
I'm not really sure how it happened, I guess I went over to say hi and joked about them calling me if they needed accompaniment, but my teacher was like "Hey, let's play this song that you know!" and I didn't really know how to refuse and this guy gave me his chair and everyone was staring at me and I couldn't really back out.
I was shaking so hard. I probably could have kept time by my heartbeat. The guy sitting next to me probably could have kept time by my heartbeat. And I sounded terrible and messed up at least half the notes even if was a ridiculously easy song (the most super-basic version of "Far From Home", if anyone's familiar with it) but the exciting thing was that I didn't die. Or faint. Or throw up. Or even scream at myself for messing up after. And in fact, when I was walking back to my seat (completely dizzily) I actually got a bit of an endorphin rush that reminded me a bit of how cutting feels, except without all the guilt and shame and stinging-ness. And the rest of the time in the restaurant was really easy to handle.
So yeah, I think I get to be happy about this.

[MegaMadness]

Sorry for the late reply, but this is great!