My wife's approach to overcoming agoraphobia is a unique one. Her off the cuff suggestion was to get me a bottle of whisky, fall into a stupor in the car and drive me up North to her parents. Hey presto! We have a solution. But wait there are a couple of snags. For one although I
Don't get me wrong because I know its hard for others to understand. I can sympathise when after going to the shops one day I am reluctant to go to the shops the next. It looks lazy, it looks like I'm just not trying. People do care but just don't have the insight. And to be brutally frank they don't want to know. Can I blame them? In all honesty know. Were I on the other side of the fence I would have to say I would be my own worst enemy and mocker extreme. People don't understand and can't understand. Its not rational and you have to experience it. It reminds me of when I worked in IT and was out of work. My uncle's girlfriend phoned about a job she'd seen advertised working on an aseembly line. She didn't understand why I was unwilling to go for the job when they actually made computers and that was my line of work at the time. People want to help but they can't help.
I had a look back at my first post two years ago. For the most part I could have written it today. Nothing has changed. This bubble I am in pulsates. It gets larger and shrinks. At some point I get out further than I imagined and then I am back to where I started again. And to be honest I don't see it changing. For so long I have been looking for acceptance as a way to get me better and finally I am starting to find it as a way in stopping this futile search for a way out. It grows ever irrational into a world of unreality.
In the hallway there is a cupboard. In this little old home its the only cupboard and despite numerous clearances it always ends up full again. In fact at the moment its close to bursting. My dad stuck a bolt on one of the doors to reinforce it and this is now sliding through the wood as a result of the pressure of things which are not needed. The irony is that there is space up in the loft to dump all this stuff but I cannot get up into the loft because the way up to it is in that cupboard.
Let me tell you about a very irrational fear and a bit of panic. One time I was up the loft on my own with only a little torch illuminating pieces of my vision. Previously my wife had been watching some paranoia program on TV. There were two guys interviewed and they related a tale of how they both went up an attic and while they were up there something attacked them. One of the guys bolted back down quickly while the other one was screaming above. When he finally came down he had marks on his neck. Oh and it just so happened he had a camera and they showed these picks off of the guy being hanged from rafters by some unknown being. Aye right! But as much as I laughed it off in the comfort of my living room when the thought suddenly returned in the darkness of my loft on my own I freaked out and nearly dived through the small square hole back to the ground level again. Don't get me wrong I still go up but I'm never quite at ease. So irrational but it happens. So me being one to keep feeding my fears I went and looked it out. It maybe happened a little differently from I remember but here is is on Youtube:
Well anyway the reason I mention this is that I have a strong urge to go up there for some things- nostalgia. Actually its little bits of my former self I am craving at the moment. Earlier I looked back at my first post and apart from the cringe factor mostly I could have written it today. Nothing has changed. In two years time probably nothing will have changed again. This I think on a subconscious level set off a search for the former self and came up blank. I've become so set in this anxiety that I cannot recall how things used to be and its part of the reason I have trouble believing things will ever change in future. Anxiety disorders are something you can live happily without but once you've experienced them I can't see how you can ever shake them off because they are basically flashbacks. When they are in the mind they don't leave and maybe some people can bury them but they will for ever more still be in there.
So first off was a couple of CDs that I haven't heard in a long time and tracks that I have not been able to find online. Music from the past always takes me back to certain moments where they meant something. There are a few books up there I would like to read again which again will take me back. But more important than all that are two other things. I have a couple of diaries up there from around 2000. I'd like to see who I was back then. Also there is an old laptop and on it is a diary from my week in France travelling mostly alone in 1998. Again I'd like to see what I thought back then. I'm not looking for answers but just want to spend a little time back in better days. All the diaries I have at hand and online postings are post-panic days which are grim in comparison.
What I have also realised is that I am living in a self created bubble. A recollection came to me again tonight. In between jobs, actually before my last job, my sister in law said to me that it was unhealthy the way I was living. Looking back I was. I was spending weeks and weeks indoors learning to program and writing applications which I posted on the Internet. She said that I should be taking breaks and going for walks. I scoffed. Seems funny now, how right she was. I see a pattern. I had lived alone for a few years prior and then moved in with my wife after I lost my job. Then I stayed indoors for the majority of the days. Finally I get a job and wind up in a corner facing a wall every day with no one to talk to.
Now when the first child came along the anxiety problems started, or at least I started to notice them. I see my bubble and wonder if the onset of responsibility and being pulled out of my little world was the first friction. Marriage, christenings and then other peoples affairs were a further resentment of being pulled from my place. Yes I do think that is what it is and it hasn't changed. My bubble has just got thicker yet smaller and I am less inclined to leave it. A long time ago I think I started to recede away from the world and not far around the corner were events that were going to tug me right back into its clutches. I go out the door now and I think to myself I don't belong here- this isn't for me. The years now have made it a foreign place and to be honest I don't want to be in it. Or at least not this immediate environment. There are plenty more places I would love to go to but always I must pass through here to get to them and that is like swimming through tar.
But for now the only place I want to go is up that loft and see who I was. It might turn out not to different from now. The fact is though the urge is too strong to ignore and I really need to have a look. There are old thoughts up there from a time before all this and I want to see if they are as foreign as the world is now. But I am content a little now that I can see how I got here. Some arrogance on my part as well as more that a dollop of ignorance ensured that I never seen all this coming. Even when I was going to the doctors asking for answers there was no urgency because throughout my life I has always coped and never experienced anything other. And I am sure a lot of you know how shattering it is to be strong and then feel at the mercy of something you cannot cope with. I can see the path though and in some ways I think I need to retrace my steps if those diaries tell me something different to what my mind is telling me now.
