My program at work had been informed of my change 1-2 weeks prior to my return, so I didn't have to do any introducing.
I suppose the first week back went about as well as could be expected. The first few hours of the first day were the worst I had to go through thankfully. I felt nauseous walking into the building on 2-3 hours of sleep (anxiety is awesome!) and started crying while my boss was talking to me about unrelated things, for the sole reason that he was being so nice. After a few more conversations, I started to stabilize and feel a bit more normal, but it was still kind of awkward for the rest of that day. Nobody gave me any trouble and all the women went out of their way to say "welcome back" and have short conversations. One of the girls in my hallway has the same problems as me: tall and size 11 feet, so we had a little rant about how it's so hard to find good shoes that size and how we can tower over people in heels.
The rest of the week I had more sleep so it started getting a lot easier. It's feeling more normal by the day and I'm worrying less and interacting more - still comparable to how much I talked before though, which is to say "not much." My name change went through on Thursday but my county is apparently pretty slow this week due to traffic from the shuttle launch so I have to get my certified copies next week sometime. Then the fun begins and I can get a new driver's license and work badges and all that jazz.
