Third times the... FREAKOUT: 3rd One Day Sit- not a charm:(

I had heard about people freaking out and crying during one-day-sits and I was wondering when my time was going to come. It came this morning. It came three times.
First it came when my head hurt. I got an actual headache from concentrating on my breath and holding out my thoughts. I didn't really know what to do after the second period of zazen because I was actually, like, exhausted in my brain.
This is probably what lead to the second freak out: oryoki, pinball, and no eye contact.
During oryoki, I was delusional about the people sitting in front of me in the zendo. In my head, they weren't paying attention to their meals, they were watching me and my forms and were utterly disappointed in me.
I knew that my perceived judgment by them came from my own issues around judgment and acceptance. I knew that I was seeing myself and that this seeing had come from me being so present. But I also knew that it made me feel worse. I tried so hard to accept it, to see it without judgment, but it wasn't happening.
By the time oryoki was over, I could focus only on getting out of the building, outside, where life was normal and things outside of my personal issues existed. But after the break, we sat more periods of zazen and I saw more of myself. This is when I started to feel like a pinball.
You know how in pinball, that poor ball is just trying to get from the top to the bottom but each time it lands, it gets catapulted to some other spot and then as soon as it finds another spot, that spot catapults it too? That's what I felt like. I would see myself and would try one zen practice: "that's a thought." Then I'd question that practice "Are you avoiding your suffering by referring to it as only a thought?" So then I'd try another one: embrace your suffering. And then I'd question that: "Are you harboring ill will? Choosing to stay in your suffering?" So then I'd try another one: "Let go, stop clinging, stop trying so hard." But letting go felt like avoiding. Nothing felt right and everything felt wrong- I just kept getting rejected from one practice after another. By the time we went upstairs for the dharma talk, I felt so bombarded by everything, I just put my head in my arm, to protect myself from any more stimulus coming at me. But then Blanche talked about continuous practice and great effort and benefiting all beings and I felt like a shmuck for having my head in my arm and so I was catapulted once more.
On top of all this, I wasn't making eye contact with anyone, because you're not supposed to. I actually totally support this concept- it allows everyone to be in their own space and not have to pretend like they're doing fine when they're not. So when I saw Paul and Jordan and people I knew, I just looked down, like I was supposed to, but what I really wanted to do was talk with them, smile with them, and interact with them. And then I noticed myself with that too. I was grasping at interactions with them to get that feeling of acceptance that I so need. And then I saw that it wasn't just acceptance, it was intimacy and feeling alone and that brought up even more stuff.
I was supposed to go back downstairs for kinhin but that would mean looking at myself even more. I wanted to escape again, but I still had my cushion from the zendo so I couldn't even leave the building. I went into the courtyard, but that was still the zen center, so I walked to the far corner and looked down on the street. I saw a couple walking by and imagined that they were looking up at me, clutching my cushion, and that I wordlessly begged them "Help me! I'm trapped in a Buddhist temple!" Then I saw a truck go by advertising corncakes: They're so sweet, you'll think it's a cake! And I laughed at the ridiculousness of this advertising and the fact that everyone loves cake and then I remembered someone saying that during sesshins, people will go into the bathroom just to read the label on the soap so that they can read something to distract themselves.
Laughter helped and I went down for the last zazen before lunch. Oryoki at lunch was way better- not because I stopped thinking they were judging me, but because I had way better form with my bowls. Work period was fine as was tea.
And then, the afternoon marathon zazen came and that was the ultimate freakout. It lingered into the evening and I'm pretty sure it's going to sit below the surface of my existence throughout the rest of the practice period. I'll get into it in the next post but let's just say for now that it felt like puking, involved the fetal position and a bottle, and made me wish I'd decided to be a knitter instead.