holiday turned into meltdown waiting to happen

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Well, I'm going away from monday to thursday with some friends, but I thought it would be a small group of people I know well and it's turned out there's going to be a bunch of strangers there

The background: until about a month ago I was sharing a house with a good friend, but I wasn't really coping with living with another person and I moved into into my own place. In another flat in the building are some other friends I know well-ish, a married couple. We're friendlier to each other since i moved in, and a while ago they e-mailed my ex-housemate, her boyfriend and I inviting us to spend this coming week at their family's holiday home. My ex-housemate's boyfriend couldn't make it, but we were both very excited to be going. I figured I'm comfortable enough with them to go off on my own for a little if I need to.

Today I was trying to get the final details and I've found out there are going to be two other couples there I don't know, possibly three. (I don't think anyone was trying to deceive me about how many people would be there or anything - I think it's one of those things that all the NTs understood was a given and I missed).

If the third couple comes I will have to share a room with my ex-housemate, and because of my sensory integration problems I probably won't sleep well. If I don't sleep well, my sensory problems intensify, and a meltdown is a real possibility. Aggravating that is the social situation. My performance skills are good, but that's on two conditions - I have to be well-rested, and it has to be in small-ish doses so that I can have recovery time. The performance is exhausting, working out what's going on is exhausting, the sensory input of socialising is exhausting, and strangers are exhausting.

I'm just really worried I'm going to humiliate myself. Even if I don't have a meltdown I don't see myself getting through this without getting snappish because I'm overwhelmed, or making a social misstep because my attention span's not up to it, or seeming like I'm being anitsocial if I withdraw as much as I need to. I could explain I'm an aspie upfront, I guess, but ironically, my performance skills are good enough, and I depart enough from the stereotype, that people don't believe me, and that's made me nervous about telling them.

Although I suppose if I have a real meltdown, that would be pretty convincing.

Why go, then? I have participated in things like this, before I knew that I was on the spectrum. And I have come away bewildered, exhausted, and wondering why I felt that my experience had been so radically different from that of everyone else.

It's nice to know that you can be invited to such things, but realize that you have a choice. You most obviously won't have a good time unless you can have a room to yourself. Since this is not likely to happen, maybe you should rethink this? You have to take care of yourself, despite what others may think. None of those people are going to understand what is best for you!

Don't go. If you don't like the people who are going, just opt-out.

You always have the opportunity to say 'no' if you don't like something.