Agoraphobia: My Little World Too Big
(1995) Home is safe. At home, I can control things. But … I need to go out. I almost have to try surprise myself with this decision. If there’s premeditation, it starts the countdown. I have only minutes I can survive out in the world, so even when I know I might need to go out, I just can’t alert myself to when I’ll do it. So I’ll do things to distract myself. To lose myself in some façade of normalcy. Write. Play a computer game. Read— And, then, I’ll jump into my car. Driving a car is stupidly unsafe when you’re an agoraphobic, but it’s the only way to…
The Other Me
‘The Good Doctor’ v. I used to wake up and, like most people, would be on autopilot. I’d do whatever there was to do, move through the day, and not have a single thought about it. It was that simple. Now, whenever I woke, there was this thing to greet me, this unease threatening to blow. I was aware of – trapped by – every thought, and they all felt wrong. I wanted to get out of the inside of my head, back on autopilot, but autopilot was broken. All that remained was surviving the moment. When I woke this morning, I was sure I wouldn’t make it through the…