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avacantlif3 · 23 days

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Lockdown, agoraphobia, recovery

So I’ve suffered from depression since I was 14, and anxiety and panic attacks since I was 18, but later in my adult life I started dealing with OCD. Like real OCD. Things like compulsive hand washing, not wanting to touch surfaces like door knobs or elevator buttons, checking the stove and door locks 20 times before going to bed, obsessive research on plane crashes, lasers, ticks…fun stuff. But covid realllllly took everything to the next level. I never understood agoraphobia until I was in the middle of a full blown mental health crisis. From November 2020 to March 2021, I did not go outside. I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment on the second floor with my wife and our infant daughter. Our cat that we’d had our entire relationship died from a very aggressive form of cancer one month after our daughter was born. It was by far the hardest month of my life.

It really felt like something broke that year. I don’t know what it was or why it manifested in agoraphobia, but when I say I didn’t go outside for 5 months I mean that very literally. I did not go to the store. I did not check the mail or walk the trash to the dumpster. I didn’t even step out onto the balcony for some fresh air because the anxiety was that overwhelming. My body physically did. not. go. outside. I was too afraid to even go into the second bedroom, which was full of junk, and especially the second bathroom, where Zelda died. I was working from home, and my entire world had been reduced down to a living room and a bedroom. I felt like I had died, like I was stuck in some sick form of purgatory. I had an entire past behind me, a life lived, friends that I could no longer see. But I did not feel like I had a future. The suicidal ideation got really bad. I hit rock bottom and felt like there was absolutely no hope in the world, no hope for me. It was the darkest place I’ve ever been.

It took years of work, therapy, and lots of prozac to recover from that level of agoraphobia, and while I’m not quite out of it yet (unfamiliar places still give me anxiety), I feel like I’m very close to cured. Honestly, working at SP was a huge part of that. I remember just less than a year ago thinking there was no way I could ever get a job that wasn’t fully remote, that would require me to leave the house. I even turned the job down initially, but K convinced me to change my mind. And bit by bit over this last year, I have continued to recover. I don’t even recognize myself from a year ago, and I mean that in the best possible way.

I’m just…really really happy lately. Happier than I’ve been in a long time, and more social than I’ve been in about 10 years. Looking back, coming here was such a good decision, and it scares the hell out of me that I almost made the wrong choice. There are so many amazing people here I never would have met, and I’m so excited to slowly get to know them better.

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avacantlif3 · 26 days

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On not being interesting

Ever since elementary school, I’ve always had this insecurity that I’m not interesting enough. I’m so socially awkward, I never know how to interact with people or what to say. I have a vivid memory from 9th grade of one of my good friends telling me that I have the personality of a wet blanket. I know 14 year olds say super mean shit all the time and they don’t know any better, and I know 34 year old Emma wouldn’t say that today, but god damn do I still hear those words echoing. I remember going home after that and writing a journal entry, and in that entry making a detailed plan to construct an entire personality, to completely reinvent myself so that I would be interesting enough to keep friends around.

It’s an insecurity that I still carry with me today, and even with friends I’ve had for 20 or more years, I often feel like I’m the verge of losing them. It takes so much behind the scenes effort to figure out how to navigate social situations, the kinds of things I’ll say, the different ways someone might respond, and all the contingent replies that I have to have ready to go. I have to meticulously plan how to end up in the social circle that I want to be part of, and how to make it look totally natural. I have to know exactly what details to drop to make myself seem smarter, more sophisticated, and more interesting than I really am. I mean I guess it’s all just imposter syndrome, and everyone feels like that to an extent. But how do they all make it look so easy?

I make jokes all the time. Compulsively. Like I literally cannot stop. If something can be turned into a joke or a pun, it must be made. It’s because of the insecurity. If I can make people laugh, I’m useful in some way. I need the constant reassurance, and even when a joke really lands the reassurance doesn’t last long. I really have to make an effort to rein it and just shut up sometimes.

It helps when people tell me their interests. If I know someone has a favorite book or movie or band, I will go off and obsessively research that thing so that next time I have a conversation with them, if I’m lucky, the subject will come up, and then the other person will be excited that I also know about this thing, and they’ll think I’m cool. It’s kind of deceitful. But I really don’t know any other way to socialize.

Sometimes I feel as though I am nothing.

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