AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"How did your agoraphobia become so bad?"
Right.
See, the strange thing was, after a while of living life a certain way, it can be easy to forget how not normal it is. I didn't spend every moment of my day in my apartment thinking about what a freak I was, how crippled I was by my condition. I just adapted. I lived the best way I could. I cooked, I cleaned, I read, I wrote, I paid bills. It was a very small life, but it was a life.
So when it was brought up, when it was thrown in my face, my immediate instinct was to shut down. That was my coping mechanism. After so many years of upsetting and disappointing people, it was hard to even bring it up.
But there was Ryan- good, patient, understanding Ryan and he wanted to know. Not because he wanted to accuse me of anything like being a bad friend or not supporting him, but because he wanted to understand me better.
I couldn't refuse him something that was such a big part of me.
I took a deep breath, turning my gaze to my own hands and rubbing my thumbnail with my other thumb- a strange habit I found comforting. I might have been able to tell him, but I didn't think I could do it with eye-contact.
"When my mom dropped me off for the last time when I was a teenager, I thrived with my uncle. It felt good to have roots and to know they wouldn't be yanked out again at any time. So I settled in. I made friends. I socialized. Eventually, I dated. I was normal. Went off to college. Came back and got a job at the elementary school. I got an apartment and had a lot of friends and social engagements.
And then one day, completely out of the blue, I was shopping at a store I had been to a million times before and I just... lost it. I didn't understand it at the time- the dizziness, the rapid heartbeat, the cold sweat, the tingling and hot and cold sensations, the pressure on my chest that made it hard to breathe. All I knew was I needed to run. So I ran and I never went back to that store. All was fine for a while. And then it happened in a different store. So I stopped going there. It happened at restaurants, bars, clubs, coffee houses. So I stopped going there too. Then, work. I had to quit.
I didn't understand at the time that the avoidance was what made it progress so much. I didn't learn that until I finally started seeing a therapist. You know," I said, smile a little at my own expense, "until I couldn't go to her office anymore either. The only real way to deal with it is to face up to it."
"Exposure therapy," he cut in, making my head jerk up, surprised he even knew the term.
"Exactly. You have to plant your feet and deal with the panic attack, not let it drive you from the place. Because, chances are, once you leave... you'll never go back again. And that will eventually have it so that you can't leave your apartment anymore. You can't do anything anymore. It happened maybe... over a year and a half. From first panic attack to not being able to leave my apartment. Just a year and a half. And in that time, all those friends I had decided that I was too 'wrapped up in myself' or 'unsupportive' of them because I couldn't make it to their band gigs or 'overreacting' by saying I wanted to go, but I couldn't make myself do it."
I closed my eyes then, taking a few deep breaths, feeling a familiar sting of tears. It wasn't often I let myself think of those people I lost along the way, the hurtful way it generally happened. Bry had been the only one who had went with the flow. When I was able to go out, he would go with me. When I had a panic attack and needed to leave, he let me go, paid whatever tab we had, got our food boxed up, then drove to my apartment and hung out with me there. When I eventually couldn't even try to go out anymore, he had shrugged and just accepted it.
Eventually, his new 'business venture' took him away from me more and more, made me all the more reclusive and starved for human contact, but I knew that I couldn't expect people to let their lives revolve around my issues. He still came sometimes, but usually only on pick-up or drop-off days. Though he always made a stop on my birthday or to bring over a movie that got onto DVD that I had wanted to see in the theater but couldn't. So he never saw them either and waited to do it with me.
