I’m terrified of people thinking I’m flaky when I’m actually just really bad at planning
A friend of mine invited me to her birthday dinner last month and I said yes. We don’t really hang out much since we’re both really busy with life stuff, but we get along great and I attended last year and had a nice time. I agreed to it and didn’t think much of it for a while.
This month, I found out that my family is throwing a party for my maternal grandmother’s birthday. She’s very old and has dementia, so I of course want to be there and spend as much time as I can with her.
Here’s the conflict. My immediate family didn’t have contact with my mom’s family for years due to some personal stuff. We re-established contact this year and have trying to make up for lost time, especially because of how old my grandmother is now. Because of this, I didn’t really know when her birthday was, just that it was sometime in April. When I got the party message, I got the dates confused and thought the family party would be NEXT weekend, not THIS weekend. Cut to me earlier today finally realizing that I accidentally double booked.
I messaged my friend explaining the situation, apologizing, and offering to meet another time. She hasn’t responded, but that’s honestly par for the course (we’re both bad at responding to texts in a timely manner because of life stuff) and she’s super sweet and I know she’ll understand but I can’t get rid of that sinking feeling in my gut that she’s gonna hate me.
TLDR: Anxiety disorder is making me believe my friend will hate me for going to my grandmother’s birthday party and canceling plans because I can’t read calendars right