Phobia (2 page)

~ 3 ~

My stay in the hospital was a blank. I didn’t know how long I’d been there or how badly I’d been injured. There was no memory. Just nothingness, then I was back at home.

I telephoned my doctor after I returned home, but he was oddly elusive in answering my questions. When I asked about my injuries I got snippets of my condition, but not the whole story. He must have been busy because during the entire conversation he sounded distracted, like he was listening to someone else while he was talking to me. He seemed unwilling to provide clear answers to my questions.

My questions were simple ones, I thought.

Questions like, “How badly was I injured?” or, “Do I have a head injury?” elicited vague, disconnected responses:

“Multiple fractures… cranial depression… inconclusive… prognosis uncertain at this time.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked. “I’m not in pain, so I assume I’ve healed well, but I’m having some problems with memory loss. I want to know if it’s permanent or not!”

Someone else muttered in the background while I was speaking, and I wondered if Dr. Ross was even listening to me.

He said, “Don’t be impatient. It’ll take time. I have other patients to see to.” With that, the conversation was over.

I didn’t pay my doctor any office visits even though I knew I should have if I wanted concrete answers about my health. Making an appointment was definitely on my to-do list… just not today.

Or the next day…

Or the next…

I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house, even for something as essential as a doctor appointment. I’d had days like that before, which had accounted for my increasing number of absences at work.

Even though I’d had conflicts at work, I was surprised I hadn’t heard from my employer or any of my co-workers. It was hard to believe the company I’d worked with for six years could discard me without a second thought. I tried to call a few times, but they never answered. The only conclusion I could reach was they were screening calls and saw my number on the caller ID. That didn’t make sense, but neither did a company never answering their phone during business hours.

Apparently nobody gave a shit that I’d nearly been killed and hadn’t shown up at work in… to be honest, I had no idea how much time had passed since the accident. Every calendar in my house was still turned to May. It looked like I’d made a wise decision in quitting the job (at least I’d been planning to quit when I crashed). They seemed happy to be rid of me.

Try as I might, I could not remember being in a hospital, even though I must have been injured. The doctor had mentioned multiple fractures, but I found no evidence of broken bones. My face and body bore no scars, no evidence of injuries whatsoever.

My hospital stay must have been a lengthy one for my fractures to be healed. The only lasting injury, it seemed, was inside my brain. I obviously had memory problems if I couldn’t recall anything about being in the hospital or coming home.

Why hadn’t there been any physical therapy sessions or follow-up doctor appointments? Or had there? I did not remember.

I felt abandoned. My family – well, that didn’t surprise me much. Both of my parents were deceased and I didn’t get along with my one remaining aunt or any of my cousins. I was pretty sure none of them would have shed a tear if I hadn’t survived the accident. I had no close friends due to my tendency to keep people at arm’s length.

Nonetheless, I’d have thought
someone
would care if I’d been injured.

Apparently, I was mistaken.

I was alone.

~*~

~ 4 ~

Making the transition from my previous life to my new life of complete solitude was not as much of an adjustment as one might think. Social anxiety had always been part of my life. Interacting with people was a chore and social events filled me with dread.

As a shy child, accustomed to being shouted down by an authoritarian father and bullied by classmates, I learned at an early age not to speak up even when I knew I was right. I was convinced that nobody wanted to hear anything I had to say and eventually came to the conclusion that I might, in fact, be invisible.

As I grew, so did my shyness. My struggle to fit in as a teen led to heavy drinking. When I drank, I was no longer invisible. Alcohol made me bold, colorful and fearless.

By age twenty I couldn’t accomplish any activity without the assistance of my intoxicating ally. I drank every day, rationing my alcohol intake to maintain the optimal level of bravado while remaining sober enough to appear in control. I drove, worked, went shopping, and had fun; all with the help of my best buddy, booze.

As I approached age thirty, symptoms of my alcoholism became impossible to ignore: blackouts, appearing intoxicated after only a few drinks, and the inability to stop once I’d had a taste. ‘Just one drink’ always led to a binge that wouldn’t end until I was unconscious.

It had been all fun and games when I was twenty years old and everybody else was getting wasted too, but the older I got, the more pathetic my drunkenness looked. Alcohol was like that fickle best friend – always there to instigate mischief, but disappeared when it was time to face the consequences. I wasn’t sure exactly when I’d made the transition from fun to pathetic, but I was tired of embarrassing myself and others.

I quit drinking and abandoned all acquaintances who drank. The problem was, I never got around to making new friends.

Sobriety had its downside, I soon discovered: depression, anxiety and loneliness.

I fell briefly back into drinking in hopes of regaining that happy feeling, but the magic was gone. Alcohol made the depression worse. Instead of the desired euphoria, drinking made me feel hopeless and melancholy. The aftermath of binge drinking was also worse. The headache was bearable, but the crippling despair that accompanied each hangover was more than I could endure.

Afraid for my health and personal safety, I parted company with my fickle friend for good and sought medical help. My doctor prescribed antidepressants and I set about putting my life back together.

I took a job with a large advertising agency. It was easy work – mostly filing and data entry. I liked the anonymity of being a common office drone who blended easily into her surroundings. I didn’t have much interaction with others, a situation that suited me just fine.

Even though my job was low-key and undemanding, the stress of having to fit into a rigid schedule heightened my anxiety. My doctor explained that anxiety and depression are closely linked even though they appear to be opposites. Dr. Ross adjusted the dosage of my medication and added another prescription for the anxiety. I was able to cope… somewhat.

I still dreaded social events, especially holidays. Instead of looking upon the month of December as a time of celebration, I regarded it as an illness to be endured and recovered from. The holiday season was like an annual menstrual period – unavoidable, uncomfortable, with six hellish weeks of glitter-filled PMS leading up to it. Fortunately, I had alienated what little family I had with my uncontrolled drinking, sparing myself the annual hell of the family holiday dinner.

Though I was safe from my family, the threat of dinner invitations always loomed from other avenues. If my co-workers happened to find out I was going to be ‘alone’ for the holidays they seemed to feel obligated to invite me to their garish displays of gluttony. It never occurred to anyone that I preferred to be alone. I developed a number of strategies for avoiding those inevitable invitations. I would mention that I was hosting dinner for close family members – a lie, of course. I didn’t want people invading my personal space any more than I liked being trapped in theirs. The mere thought of entertaining guests made my chest tighten and pulse increase. What if I wanted them to leave and they refused?

In summertime, long weekends held a similar threat. Everyone seemed to have a cottage somewhere and invitations were tossed about like so much confetti. I would make a point of mentioning plans to travel out of town to circumvent impending invitations. I never went anywhere, of course. Instead, I locked myself inside my house with the curtains closed to make it appear nobody was home.

My two week vacation from work was the same. I hung thick blankets over the windows and doors to prevent the outside world from seeing me moving around inside the house. I shut my phone off and enjoyed a wonderful holiday free from intrusions. I often fantasized about being stranded alone on a tropical island where nobody could find me, phone me or knock on my door.

My obsession with privacy escalated until I looked forward to hiding in my house more than anything. I had once enjoyed gardening, but my beloved flower beds were now overgrown with weeds and grass. I wished I could take care of them, but every time I ventured outside to work in the yard, some neighbor found it necessary to start a conversation with me. Nosy, nosy… people were just so
nosy
! Did it matter if I was having a nice day or whether it looked like rain? Can’t a person enjoy her garden without being bombarded with stupid questions? Apparently not, so I stopped going outside.

As my isolation progressed, another phobia surfaced: telephones. I couldn’t bring myself to answer a phone unless I knew exactly who was calling and what they wanted. I avoided the phone at work, often leaving my desk the moment it rang. If someone answered the phone and tried to hand it to me, I ran away, using the excuse that I urgently needed to use the bathroom. My co-workers whispered amongst themselves out of earshot, sneaking subtle glances in my direction. They thought I didn’t notice. If only they knew how transparent they were.

Hiding my phobias had become a full-time job. It was too exhausting. I decided I could no longer work for that company.

I imagined working from the safety of my home – free from ringing phones and nosy people. Online employment was the answer to any agoraphobic’s prayers.

Agoraphobic. I wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but that was what I was.

To me, the outside world was like a zombie apocalypse. I felt as though hands were constantly pawing at me, each trying to claw its chunk of flesh from my body. Doorbells, ringing phones, people everywhere demanding attention. The only time I felt truly safe was behind the locked doors of my home. Even then, I sensed intruders prowling outside, waiting for me to emerge; waiting to ambush me… sniffing around the cracks of windows and doors, knocking, ringing… hoping I’d be stupid enough to answer.

I did most of my shopping online, minimizing the number of times I had to physically leave the house. Other than doctor appointments or refilling my gas tank, I almost never ventured outside. When shopping was unavoidable, I went early in the morning to avoid lineups and chance encounters with acquaintances. I had neither the time nor the patience for awkward conversations with people who felt obligated to talk to me. If I spied a familiar face, I avoided eye contact by staring at my cell phone and pretending to read a message.

I had nothing to say to any of my old cohorts. They were from a time in my life I had no desire to revisit. Word had gotten out that I was sober, which made things even more awkward. They might invite me to catch up on old times over coffee or tea, not understanding that without alcohol I was incapable of carrying on a comfortable conversation.

I felt safe while driving, because my car was sort of like a second little home. I could lock the doors and feel secure. I’d had the windows lightly tinted – just enough to shield me from unwanted stares, but not so dark as to make onlookers curious enough to stare. My car was my only means of transportation; I couldn’t take public transit or taxis because I couldn’t bear being at the mercy of another driver. When
I
was driving, I was secure in the knowledge that I had the freedom to come and go as I pleased.

If I was not the driver, the vehicle became a trap and a panic attack followed. The last time my car was in the shop, I’d tried taking the bus home, but the anxiety made me so nauseous I was terrified I would vomit on the bus while everyone stared. I frantically rang the bell and jumped off at the next stop without bothering to see where I was. I ended up walking for miles through unfamiliar neighborhoods before finally making it home.

I called the mechanic and asked him to deliver the vehicle to my home, promising a large tip for his trouble. After that, it became routine for my mechanic to pick up and deliver my car whenever it needed maintenance.

Trips away from home became shorter and less frequent because of a nagging fear that something terrible was going to happen to my house while I wasn’t there to protect it. The thought of losing my beloved sanctuary terrified me. Every time I left the house, I worried that I would come home to a blazing fire, a sinkhole or a burst pipe. Before I went anywhere, I checked and rechecked the stove, furnace and all other electrical appliances. I touched electrical cords to see if they were hot. Eventually I just went around unplugging everything before leaving the house – in the interest of safety, of course – one couldn’t be too careful. Kitchen appliances, televisions, lamps, clocks… all had to be unplugged before each outing. When I returned, I had to plug everything back in and reset the clocks. Leaving the house was becoming more trouble than it was worth.

When my doctor suggested I see a psychiatrist I refused, because it meant seeing a new doctor in a new location and more trips away from home. Plus, a psychiatrist would want to cure me. He would force me out of my comfort zone and make me do things I didn’t want to do. My doctor kept pushing the issue, so I let him refer me to a psychiatrist just to shut him up. Also, I was curious.

The shrink turned out to be a quack. He phoned me to introduce himself before making an appointment for me. To be exact, he left a message on my answering machine and then I phoned him back because I was unable to answer calls from unknown numbers – something he would have known if he had read the information in my file.

That was strike one.

The conversation went well, until the shrink mentioned that group therapy would be a mandatory part of my treatment.

Strike two.
Nobody used the word
mandatory
with me and got away with it. Then he said something that made me change my mind about ever going to see him in person.

He said, “You
will
be able to make it to all the appointments, won’t you? I can’t have anybody missing appointments once they are scheduled.”

Strike three. You’re out, Doctor Know-It-All!

The next day I called the clinic to cancel the appointment and didn’t reschedule. I never contacted them again. What kind of a psychiatrist was he if he didn’t understand my condition? Didn’t he understand that I had days when I simply could not cope with the outside world? My regular doctor was used to having me reschedule appointments on bad days.

Throughout all of this, I managed to fake my way through life and maintain a tenuous hold on my job.

I began to do more of my work from home. I called in sick more often than I appeared at the office in person. My co-workers’ sour expressions made clear their displeasure that, in their opinions, I was being given preferential treatment. I sensed my supervisor shared their sentiments, but found no fault with the quality or quantity of work I was doing. Poor attendance and avoidance of phone calls were my only indiscretions. Nonetheless, I saw termination in my near future. I dreaded the humiliation of being fired, then having to clean out my desk amid all the gossipy whispers of the office staff. I made the decision to quit before he had the chance to fire me, then I could pretend I’d had a lucrative offer from another firm. Another lie, but at least I would be leaving on
my
terms.

It was for that reason I found myself in the path of an out-of-control vehicle on a rain-drenched highway that morning. If only I’d listened to my gut instinct that day – I hadn’t felt like leaving the house at all. I shrugged off the feeling of impending doom and gathered the courage to face my workplace one last time. Just one more time and then I’d be free, I’d told myself.

And now, it seemed, I was free. Free from that life, but now what?

What was I to do with my newly found freedom?

~*~