I have to be up in about 6 hours. I feel so painfully agoraphobic at this exact moment. Tomorrow I�m traveling to Las Trampas, NM. Technically it�s right up the road, okay it�s 50 miles, but for me, it may as well be a new continent. I can�t believe I was in Taos two weeks ago. I�m getting a feeling that I don�t belong up there. It�s tourist season, it�s crowded and noisy. I�m scared as hell once again. I think I haven�t been updating my diary because I�ve been feeling so agoraphobic. I�ve been trying to deny it, trying to make it through, trying to force myself out of the house to help myself stay in denial. I�m not agoraphobic if I can go out, right? Ha! Not true. I really don�t want to admit how much I still can�t handle going outside alone or being as far away from my house as I will be tomorrow. I�ve wanted so badly to do really good. I have. It took me 15 years, but I can go to school by myself now. I have these moments where I�ll be so grateful for being outside on campus by myself. Yesterday I had one of those moments when a beautiful deep blue Stellars Jay rested from a brisk flight mere feet from me. It was just me and him. That one moment was so beautiful. My toes got sunburned, and I felt so grateful for experiencing the brutal warmth of the sun - to experience a side effect of living life, especially on the first day of summer. But I�m not okay.
When I�m at school, in class, in my own little space, in my own seat where I can hide in my watercolors, my notes, my textbooks, I�m okay. When I�m walking past people in the hallway, have to say �excuse me� to someone, or have someone ask me directions, or god forbid have to pee, I freak out. In all nearly two years of going to the college, I�ve used the restroom one time and it was just after the janitor left, so no one was in there. The other times I�ve held it till I got home.
Okay, part of me is terrified because of something I just mentioned. I�m afraid because I�m getting picked up at 8:15 and leaving back for home at 3 pm. That�s eight hours. I'm being driven there, so I can't just drive home. It takes four hours before I can�t hold it any longer. The odds are against me. And yes, when I�m out in public places, when I schedule my days �out� I think of these things. Right now I�m over thinking about these things. Thank god it isn�t that time of the month.
On Tuesday, I went to the mall for the first time since, I think, March. Maybe December, I haven�t wanted to think of the mall, and have managed that rather well, but I need new clothes, and I don�t want to re-live my mail-ordering clothes days. Well, I never made it out of JC Penney. I looked down the main corridor, and it seemed really long, the laughter and chatting of dozens of people echoed. The movement of multi-colored clothes: shorts, shirts, hats, skirts. The dressing rooms, the store people, the babies crying. The scattered patterns and shapes and textures of clothes in irregular aisles was once again too much. I feel too vulnerable when I�m outside in public places. But I found that I still seek out the good things, I struggle to find the ants, the beetles, to focus on the birds, or leaves of trees, the flowers or the clouds, instead of cars and sirens, and the jerks who honk and wave at me, even though I�m with my mom. But I still have my momentary sanctuary in the wildflower petals.
Wednesday at school, I really needed my safe, quiet alone space. I never got to it. Three of four guys who�ve been rather overly friendly to me decided to try to chat, I avoided one because I was on my cell phone with my mom, but the other two, I couldn�t. I needed to be left alone, yet I had class, and I had to speak in class about my writing and journaling. My voice wouldn�t come. It stalled in my throat, and I sat there being the last to speak, like always. I mumbled something bullshitty about my journaling being primarily about what means the most to me in life; writing about what makes me feel okay to be �here.� I realized somewhere between my first word, the teacher asking me to speak up and my emphasis as I spoke the word �here� that I really wasn�t okay being �here� at that moment. She asked us for our in class assignment to write to our inner artists. I wrote to Agoraphobitch instead:
Agoraphobitch,
Blue, black, beige, in the shadows hiding and waiting. But what are you waiting for. Are you waiting for me to say stop, waiting for me to say go, or are you just waiting for me. Just waiting like the dawn waits for the sun, or the moon waits for nightfall. The colors wait for the paper. The paper waits for the ink. A dance. Are you waiting for my waltz that I never got. Waiting for the dance of life to begin, or to begin again. Are you waiting for winter and snow covered adobe casitas and the sparkle of the snow upon the ground. That will move you, it always has, but only for a moment, like happiness. It stops coming, visits for a while, then always leaves again. That is natures way my dear. Things leave more than they stay, and when gone only traces, if anything, remain.
Josh was unbelievably kind to me today�I�m utterly grateful.
I need to unlock my Vale of Enna�it was painfully honest about my struggles to get into school at all. I�m there again, only I�m struggling to be at school this time around.
~e
one day I'll get brave...I have a feeling there's a reason to show up for that documentary seminar this weekend. Overly ambitious agoraphobics unite...indeed.
