Let’s talk about agoraphobia for a minute.

I didn’t consider myself agoraphobic before I was diagnosed with it. I have a family member who is agoraphobic, and our experiences are very different. He struggles to leave his home at all. The only references I had for this particular phobia were him and what I have seen on television and movies, basically the inability to leave the home. I am able to leave the home. As a matter of fact, up until the lockdowns for Covid, I would try to leave the house quite a bit. However, after I started in therapy, my therapist did the inventories and whatever to figure out what is actually going on with me, and while I was capable of leaving my house, I could never do so without a lot of anxiety. I thought that because I was capable of going to the office, stopping by the store, heading out with my camera, etcetera, my issues fell under the umbrella of generalized anxiety, not that I fell under the agoraphobia umbrella.

As my therapist and I went further and further into our sessions, it came out that I live in constant fear of driving my car. I have these “visions” when I drive (my OCD pops in here) of me driving my car off of a bridge, or a wire or tree falling in the road in front of me and ripping the top of my car (and my head) off. Sometimes these visions make me so nervous that I will see “nightmare man” which is another blog post altogether, but basically, I see a shadow anywhere on the road and my brain thinks it is this man I used to have nightmares about repeatedly throughout my early childhood. He likes to pop up when my anxiety is very high, and sometimes he likes to pop up when I don’t realize I am anxious until I “check-in” with my body and find the tension in my neck and shoulders, and jaw. Sometimes he is the reason I remember to check in with my physical symptoms and realize I’ve had my shoulders up to my ears for so long that trying to relax them hurts.

Back to the agoraphobia. I have a hard time “taking up space” in public. Going to stores, I find myself not able to browse because someone else might want to look at the thing I am looking at and I’m in the way. This happens whether there are people in the aisle with me or not. If I have to fill my tires with air, I will only do so if there is no line at the air pump. If I get in line at the pump, I will take my time until all my tires are road safe. If someone pulls up behind me, I will only fill the one I know loses air the fastest, then I will get in my car and leave because the person behind me is waiting. Lines at stores get my anxiety up. When it’s my turn, I feel the panic rise until my turn is over, because I am taking up space where I don’t feel I deserve it.

I struggle to eat in public. I do it, because it’s weirder if I don’t if that makes sense. I have anxiety through the meal, but I am able to get through it.

Public transportation is not an option for me unless it is an airplane. I have never been on a bus or a train. I get on planes because I have to. I opted to drive 7 hours in a rental car to get to training for my job instead of flying into O’Hare. I hate driving, but I hate airports and airplanes more.

So, you have a pretty good idea of the basics of my agoraphobia. I have always struggled with going out with my camera on my own because I am always afraid of something awful happening to me. My partner and I went to Hocking Hills in Ohio on a weekend trip once. I had never been there before, so it was exciting. The entire time we were there I was suppressing anxiety that I was going to fall off of the cliffs. That anxiety didn’t leave me for months after the trip, I would have nightmares that I HAD fallen off the cliff, and that I was currently dead.

So, you can see how anxiety has fucked with me enough to not really want to leave my house. I do, but as sparingly as possible. Lockdowns for Covid have made my agoraphobia VERY happy. The problem is that I WANT to travel. I WANT to get out with my camera. For a while, I would have days where I could get out and shoot, the anxiety was there but not as bad as usual, so I was better able to work through it. Those days became fewer and further between. The more weight I have gained has triggered my eating disorders as well, and the more weight I put on, the less I wanted to leave the house because it was the more space I took up that I don’t believe I deserve to occupy. It’s … complicated.

When I enrolled in the photography program at school, I did so with the mentality that being required to get out with my camera for my program will force exposure therapy, and I would have no excuses to back out of the exposures. Today was the first time I took my camera out in about a year. Keep in mind, my camera used to be the only thing that helped my anxiety, so it is completely foreign to me that my camera is now making me uncomfortable. It is a very strange feeling to be afraid of being out there shooting.

Well, today I decided, since we were getting a fresh blanket of snow and I have an assignment coming up, I would stop on my way home from my partner’s house and take a few photos. I was able to pop off nine images before my camera’s battery died. Rookie error, I know. But the whole time I was taking those nine photos, I was anxious. I was afraid that someone was going to approach me from the apartment buildings behind me and inquire what I was doing there. As if I don’t deserve to be there, taking up space. As if anyone cares what I’m doing.

The benefit here is that I now know which of my anxieties I will battle this semester. Last semester it was “YOU’RE NOT SMART ENOUGH FOR ENGLISH COMP.” and “YOU’RE NOT CREATIVE ENOUGH FOR DIGITAL IMAGING.” This semester it will be “YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE AND BE HAPPY.”

I suppose this is a good lesson for all of us. Identify your enemy. I was able to defeat last semester’s enemies with a 4.0 GPA. This semester’s monster might be harder to defeat, but at least I know who I am fighting. Here’s one of my nine anxiety images for internet tax: