agoraphobia

Agoraphoto.

/ ♡~Melicious~♡ / Leave a comment

I made a photo book a while back with this title, and it seems to be more relevant today than it was those few years ago when I completed it. 

I mentioned this in previous posts, so I won’t get into a terrible amount of detail here, but I have agoraphobia.  It’s not “debilitating,” per se.  I CAN go out of my house or my comfort spaces, but I hate it and it gives me a ridiculous amount of anxiety. 

She didn’t think about when she enrolled in a photography course.  You muttered to yourself just now.  You’re partially right.  I did think about it, but I thought that this would be a wonderful way to steal my creative mojo back from the depths of my depression and possibly beat the agoraphobia while I was at it. 

I am saddened to admit that I’m not there yet.  C. and I went out shooting.  Going places with others usually keeps my anxiety in check, so I know this was kind of a “cheat” to bring him along, but I was going downtown at night to photograph some images for class and I don’t know how familiar you are with Cleveland, Ohio, my dear reader, but it can be murdery, and we don’t like being murdered.  That said, we did go to a few different locations to get images.  It was still quite chilly out, so that was annoying because being in a temperature that isn’t comfortable for me induces anxiety already, let alone the dark and the murdery undertones.   Cleveland, albeit murdery, and kind of smelly, photographs beautifully, especially at night.  Besides, I had a city landscape assignment to take care of for school, and I had been downtown a million times before, right?  Well, no.  I hardly ever go downtown, especially when it is dark.  I have to admit, I get into a tunnel vision of sorts when I am peering through a viewfinder, so I would be an easy target for said murdery people.  I digress.

Terminal Tower lit in support of Ukraine. © Melissa Jeffrey, 2022

I was excited to shoot these photos.  C. is ever supportive when it comes to me and my quirkiness, so that helps, and he suggested a bunch of places that we could visit since he is far more familiar with downtown than I am.  We had a very pleasant (however cold) outing. 

Except for that one thing. 

Every time I have been out with my camera lately, I can’t seem to concentrate on what I am doing because every nerve ending in my body is screaming at me to get the fucking shot and get back in the car, get out of there.  It wasn’t only when I was downtown with an escort, either.  This feeling was happening the day I went out for a daytime solo shoot as well.  Get the shot, get the fuck out.  Agoraphobia is a god damn bitch.  The thing I always loved about photography is that it forces you to slow down and be very deliberate in your actions and thoughts, that’s the best way to get a great photograph.  Slow and deliberate.  That’s a theme.  Meditation (something I am always being told to practice more often), deep breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, all of these things are meant to slow you down and make you remain present in this moment.  I think that is why photography was always such a soothing activity for me.  It literally forced the anxiety to shut the fuck up for a minute while I concentrated on this other thing.  

We had a great night downtown.  I did enjoy our day, and I hate the bring the house down on a but, but I enjoyed our day in the only way that I know how to enjoy time anymore, with low-level but very uncomfortably present anxiety.

I know that I will never cure myself of this anxiety.  Part of me doesn’t want to.  To be honest, I don’t know how to function without it.  I don’t know how to be a person without it.  That said, I also don’t want it to get out of control and overtake my entire existence, which is has been slow and steady doing my whole life, but seemingly more so since the pandemic started.  I went out with my camera a few weekends ago to work on this assignment and I honestly felt like I was emerging from a nuclear fallout shelter after decades of being underground.  My anxiety was high, so everything was brighter than it really is, everything smelled more pungent than it really does, sounds were louder than they really are, my clothing touching my body felt like razors, and to top it all off, it was cold as fuck that day, so all the burning face tingles that accompany Ohio weather felt more tingly than it should have. 

A Color Study. © Melissa Jeffrey, 2022

I am late posting this because it took me a hot minute to overcome the anxiety that even writing about this was giving me.  I don’t want this to be my “normal.”  I’ve managed with other kinds of anxiety, but for fuck’s sake, don’t take away my photography. 

The best thing for me to do is to figure out how to get into a meditation mindset when I am out there with the camera.  I need to get back to a place where photography is slow and deliberate.  I need to get back to a place where the camera brings me peace.  I’m afraid that if this agoraphobia sticks around that it will ruin the one thing I have left that makes me feel like a whole fucking human.  Photography used to give me meaning, I fear that without it, my self-worth will plummet even further.  I already can’t stand my job because it has been stripped of the artistry that I loved so much, I can’t bear to think of what my life will be like if I am stripped of photography, too. 

I am supposed to start EMDR soon in therapy (that is, if I can stop bitching about how unfulfilling my job has become every hour I have with my therapist).  I am really hoping that it will be the breakthrough I need to get back to 2015 me.  That was the last time I felt any kind of motivation to be a human.  I just realized; C. only got to know that me for a few months before I devolved into the lump of turd-filled flesh that I am right now. 

I hope that he will still like me when I get back to being the real me.   

Until next time,
☮️💖🍩

Know Your Enemy.

/ ♡~Melicious~♡ / 1 Comment

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: