Managing a social event

I'm the designated navigator to get us to the restaurant but the GPS melts my head.

Everyone arrives and immediately I'm in hyper vigilance. I feel like I mess the seating up because I prefer to sit on the end and get a slight sense others would rather not be stuck next to me. The menus come round and I have to read everything before I know what I want but it's all just words on a page. We order and the food comes out and it's delicious and I just want to concentrate on eating. Some strong incense wafts over. I want the table water but don't know how to ask for it. The music is on loud and cutlery is clattering and everyone's talking. All this is going on before I've even got onto trying to have a conversation. There's multiple conversations. I'm conscious of how quiet I am and how it could appear I'm not making much of an effort to speak to the people I haven't seen for a while. Some of them are hardly ever spoken to because these are the only situations in which I see them. I REALLY want to talk but I don't know how to. People ask me stuff and I summon everything within me to string a coherent answer together. All the while, I don't know what my expectations are. I go to the loo to give my brain a break but there's loud music piping through in the cubicle. The hyper vigilance continues then after over 2.5 hours we go home.

My partner asks "Did you enjoy yourself?".

I speak in front of others every day as part of my job but still cannot manage these situations. Knowing I'm autistic goes so far in accepting myself yet I still feel in some instances, it's not good enough. People, even those CLOSEST to me, still have no idea what it's like to be "high functioning". They have no idea of the effort involved merely to "get by" (before we get on to any kind of enjoyment).

I've been awake since 2pm and I don't know if it's indigestion or over stimulation.