It’s been a lifetime, it’s been the blink of an eye. At home with agoraphobia for years longer than I feel brave enough to admit, I’m all my ages at once. The past boxed in with me, yes, but the future too, like how can I dream a whole life just from my room?
I walk my street in the mornings, after breakfast. The dogs pull me and I let them, to the end of the road, a little further. There’s shallow breaths and the open sky and my feet go until I reach the trunk of a cherry blossom tree and here I look out, onto the world that never waited for me, and if I’m lucky a bus drives past, and if I’m lucky it doesn’t make it all too murky; the image of past me once on it and future me never again converging. I take a photo with my phone, just in case tomorrow I only make it to the empty lot where they bulldozed my neighbour’s house, the dogs’ leashes taut with whining and yearning, me uttering, I know, me too.
Months ago my family sat me down with some words that were both a proposition and a threat, in the way all love is. It went through me like a spoon goes through something soft, all the strength of a knife without the malice. And when split open I’m no good at keeping my secrets, and when wounded I’m helpless at hiding my shame. They dangled the carrot of time in front of me and told me things I already know, like life is passing, and patience is finite, and I break their hearts as much as I break my own. The dogs chewed along the frays of the carpet as my mother spoke, then my brother, such normalcy as I was gutted and emptied out, and I thought of when, as a child, I’d struggle with certain clothing so intensely (the feel of them on my skin, bunched too close, too tight, too uneven) that in the mornings before kindergarten I’d writhe on the floor begging for them to be removed. I remembered too that in those moments my family would stand above me in silence, waiting for the spell of anguish to pass. So, there I was again, with nothing to give except the past repeating; me falling apart on the floor, them around me, above me, willing it to be over.
Perhaps this is how it always goes, and I’m not so exceptional in my helplessness. Maybe you too wake in a warm bed, and have learnt to be grateful for how it burns.
I struggle with explaining the magnitude of agoraphobia, the way it has so little to do with home and everything to do with safety, with control. To do it over would be to do everything the same again, because there is no way to protect yourself against the terror of life, to not become aware of its absurdity, its randomness, how large of a shadow it casts. Agoraphobia is the inability to look at anything without feeling the vignette of this awareness, something in the corner of the eye that can’t be fully perceived and yet never ignored, either. Where to go from here? How to unsee the edge of the illusion lifting, unanswerable questions just below? What to do other than to retreat to what you do know, and press firmly against what’s closest, what’s most familiar?
I’ve had a recurring dream where I’m alone in a place I’ve been to many times before. I want to get home, and my feet work, but I don’t try running. Instead, I sit on the curb, waiting for someone, all the while knowing no one is coming. It’s a dream that happens just parallel to my reality, so when I wake it lingers as sorely as a bad memory. Agoraphobia is all of me at once pressing firmly against myself, a boundless love to keep me tethered to the indifferent expanse of existence.
Tomorrow I’ll walk my street again. I hope to make it to the end, I hope to see a bus without it breaking my heart.
Just the best thing I’ve ever read. Your writing is beyond wonderful🫂
this stirred something in me... i love how you write ♥️