Trapped within walls: Confronting Agoraphobia and Social Anxiety

Part two of How to avoid the drift through life.

Afraid to leave the house. Engaging in a conversation with people was a fear greater than dying. Any conversations I had would haunt me for days. Endless reruns looking for the stupid things that I said. Seeking for misinterpretations on what I said. The horror in my own stupidity and the terror of what people thought about me.

Leaving the house would bring panic attacks, vomiting, or diarrhoea. Sometimes all of them. Dilapidated by my body letting me down, I stayed indoors till the survival instinct drove me out for food or to gain the benefits I needed.

The late teenage me was a broken person. Drifting through my life, except that there was no life. There was static. There was decline. All within the five rooms of an apartment.

The sitting room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the hallway. All tiled floors. The curtains hung on net curtain wire, and the bedroom never had natural light. The bathroom and kitchen had no curtains, they overlooked the back. Across the gardens was a row of bungalows that faced the main road, and at either end were more flats, just like mine. The old and the young housed together.

Obtaining my own flat had long been a dream. My dreams looked different, more affluent than I found myself. The essence of that ambition was there in that flat, just me. The introvert breathing in his own silence.

Growing up, mental health got labelled with one of two terms, either doolally or nervous breakdown. Both meant hospitalization. Being on the inside of those labels you never think about it in such terms. Even though you know something is not right, it is hard to ascribe yourself with insanity.

It isn’t one day you are an outgoing bouncy person and the next you curl up in the corner of the room shivering and whimpering. It is a long slow rationalized behaviour that takes you there.

Depression is just a phase of the mind. I did not feel depressed, the depressed never do. I felt lonely at times, I was in my late teens and full of hormones. The need to feel wanted, to feel loved, is basic human nature.

I found happiness without a TV. I read cheap books. There was a market stall, which sold used paperbacks – and paid you half the price if you returned them in the same state – which made reading a cheap entertainment. I read many novels, found the joy in books. Books open your mind. Novels allow you an insight into the lives of others, Books expand you. Stories humanise other people.

Alone, in a flat, poor, and depressed. Staring in the mirror at that face with broken glasses with an inner voice that easily convinced me I was ugly. That I deserved the life alone, for being me.

Waiting for life to come knocking on my door to encourage me to play. Filling the time I was waiting for the knock. A phone that (installed by a previous resident and I took on, there were only landlines) that virtually never rang.

To go to a doctor and explain what was wrong was tough when I could not figure out the problem. My last two experiences with the doctors were full waiting rooms, confusion, and delays of over an hour after my appointment time. Those thoughts alone would be enough to freak me. If I could survive that and explain what was wrong. What would his reaction be? Laughter, a scolding for wasting his time, or a trip to the looney bin. The place with walls but no windows where I would rot away.

A happening spurred a change in me. There was a show of strength back in the seventies. Bulked muscle men would take a ‘yellow pages’ and rip it in half with their bare hands. For those who don’t know, the Yellow Pages was the phone book for business and services issued by BT both as a public and private company. A thick book with lots of thin pages. Being a skinny wretch I decided one day to evaluate my strength. Of course I failed to tear that book in half. Instead I ripped out the pages and scrunched them up throwing them to the floor. Finished I sat on my sofa and looked at the waste. Lighting a cigarette I wondered what next. The response came immediately.

Set fire to them. It will clear them up. You will be fine and so will your flat.

My brain intended to kill me.

To stop the vomiting, I stopped eating. If I had an appointment, I would get up hours before and stare out the window to familiarise myself with the outside. I would prepare to leave at least twice the time it would take me to walk to my destination. Before which I would take copious trips to the toilet.

All was so normal to me; I did not feel I was mentally off-balance. I knew something was wrong. But it was just my nerves. I was a man. I had to be strong. I had to fight the nerves.

When you spend every day stuck inside your own home, time and days lose meaning. How long I spent in this state is unknown to me. Two years is my best guess.

Even through all my rituals to cope with the fear I suffered still. I designed routes to get to places around available public toilets. I avoided crowded areas, taking side streets to move down the shopping areas. Moving like a rodent, scurrying near the edges. Finding places just off the thoroughfare where I could be still and alone for a few minutes.

One day I had left my flat and walked two, three hundred yards and the panic set in. The urge to use the toilet set upon me. I turned and headed home. Reaching into my pocket I took out my keys to be ready to open the door. My panic subsided. So much so, that I continued my journey.

The same ritual worked the next time. Gripping my house keys seemed to calm my mind. That connection to home and security. I was convincing my evil self-destructive brain that even though I had just left the house I was going home, just by an exceedingly long route.

Added to my other rituals I managed to conquer my fear of the outdoors.

The next thing to do would be to obtain employment.

My clothes worn, my appearance tramp like. I had bought one suit in my life for a siblings wedding. Once my jean collection had worn out to one pair, the suit trousers had become regular wear. Which washing had faded to a distinctly different colour to the jacket. My only coat was a leather jacket. Add to that my low results in low exams, even the serf employers would have difficulty employing me. Competition for jobs with three million unemployed was fierce.

I knew I needed something more to offer the lords of their manor, or the squires that would interview me. I needed a buffer to get me ready for the interview.

After leaving school, I spent a year at college in a course designed for those that failed at school. From that I got a job. I went back to see the administrator of the college, hoping for a repeat. Get some brand-new qualifications I can present to an employer.

He told me about a course at the college run by the MSC. (Manpower Services Commission – a now defunct arm of government that helped people get work.) It paid you for three months to learn bookkeeping and accounting on a full-time course at college. The pay was better than benefits – a lot better – and my rent still covered by my rebate.

That course was starting in the new year. Before that he suggested I go to live in Spain for a month via some scheme paid for by the EU. I had a month to obtain a few new clothes, get a passport, and prepare myself to be with a group of people around my age. I was Cordoba bound in November.

The drift was working for me.

Spain was great. A lovely distraction but not a holiday.

The MSC course made me nervous. Clutching my keys on that January morning I entered the classroom, realised I was the youngest by a country mile. I could be stupid and blame it on my youthful exuberance. Yet the math was easy, either I had got smarter from reading all those books or the lecturers explained it better. But it sank in. The joy of learning cuddled next to me, and I cuddled it back. I have never let go of that cuddle.

I hid my fears.

I hid my mental illness.

I went with the drift.

By the time September came around, I had distinctions in bookkeeping, a grade A in accounting ‘o’ level. But I had also written a first short story. Taken a second short story to full novel.

Cuddling the joy of learning gave me a desire to continue. A year this time, part-time so I could claim benefits and feed myself. English language, Literature and Maths at the brand-new GCSE level.

The drift was still working for me.

Back then in the yuppie days of the eighties, self-publishing cost a lot more money than benefits could supply. I sent my novel to a couple of publishers. Rejection put me off writing. My self-esteem may have climbed upwards, but it was still on the edge of the cliff awaiting the wind to blast me back into the pit.

The drift took me to older married women looking for a little escape. Still struggling to believe I was desired, I let the drift take me wherever it wanted and to who ever wanted me. The stories of drifting into love are for part three.

(For the lovers of canon – that was the birth of the man eventually known as skinyboy)

My first employment post insane was in a factory. A double-glazing factory, and my job was to drill holes in the frames for the handles to sit. I did not particularly want the job. But I applied, got the interview. The interviewer told me I did not want to work there. He said I was overqualified and was just taking it till an office job came up.

I was proud in my distinctions in bookkeeping and my grade A results in accounting, and English GCSE results and he was right. But I spun a story for him, telling him that I was forced to sit those exams and courses, that I never enjoyed them and really all I wanted to do was work in a factory. Live a simple life, not the life my parents wanted for me.

He gave me the job. I left a month later to work in an office.

The factory was ten hours a day, four days a week, with most days two hours overtime. I was on the late shift, starting at 2pm. Getting home at one in the morning, eating, relaxing and sleep. Getting up in time to go to work. It was not a life. The pay was good, I managed to update my wardrobe, buy a new cycle, and treat myself to new glasses. The social life was a desert but for the occasional oasis.

The office was the DHSS otherwise known as the givers of benefits to the unemployed. When I got the interview, I was pleased. I covered my years of insanity and recovery with being a self-employed ‘musician/songwriter’. As the interview date approached the fear that struck me was the ease they could check my lie. I was so fearful that it was a honeytrap by the fraud section that when I entered the room and found it was an interview I relaxed and became fluent and confident answering all the questions.

I had a flat, a serf job, I was a full member of society.

The drift was working for me.

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