I have always been a homebody, even in elementary school. I went to the park after class with my friends, and to birthday parties. But I felt safest and happiest and most myself at home—the tiny, messy apartment I share with my parents.
Starting in 6th grade, I hung out with kids who were kind of mean. Maybe they reflected the meanness I felt within myself, or maybe I just fell into their company. But it felt bad.
Under the pressing fluorescent lights of my middle school one day, I excitedly announced to my friends: “Guys!! My favorite band came out with a new album!”
Eli laughed scornfully, “Oh my god, I bet it’s like a boy band, probably a One Direction rip off.” The others giggled.
I rescinded my enthusiasm, replacing it with attempted nonchalance. “No they’re like…” I tried to raise my voice, but the conversation had already moved forward. My voice sank back to quiet: “Um. Whatever.”
Every day was some kind of variation on this: my vying for attention and being frustrated. I paced back and forth for hours in my room, ruminating on the day’s interactions. What was a joke and what was real? What did I say, and what should I have said? I would fall into a fitful sleep to these thoughts tumbling around in my head.
God. I ate so much at lunch today, im so f-cking fat. I could barely say anything. Just eating and watching while they all talked like normal f-cking people. I can’t stand them, I can’t stand their eyes on me. Aster, can you just calm down? I have so much to do. I don’t want to do any more of this sh-t that I hate. I don’t know why I’m doing anything. I’m so scared. Please just let me crawl out of this body. Please just let me out of this person I am.
I craved the ego boost of having friends, of having people who wanted to be around me, who needed me. But I didn’t enjoy being with the friends I had. And I didn’t enjoy being me.
Each time I left the house, I flew into a panic over what to wear, overwhelmed by how each article of clothing dictated how people would see me.
More and more, I couldn’t wait to get home to my little bedroom to escape. The still warmth of silence formed a comforting blanket around the spikes of my fury or the round curves of my depression.
Alone in my room, I sketched little portraits and doodles. My mind slowly silenced itself as my focus shifted from obsessive thoughts to the act of creation.
Isolation Enabled
Midway through 7th grade, COVID-19 sent everyone into lockdown, enabling the full isolation I craved. However, my parents had an increasingly difficult relationship that was hard to be around, sequestering me to my room.
I spent the winter of 2020-2021 in a too-cold room, wearing an oversized black hoodie and giant brown pants that swayed around my legs. My diet was whatever the city gave out in the free food program during Covid—my mom was always on the hunt for a deal. Every surface of my room was littered with little plastic applesauce cups and aluminum wrappers.
Day after day, I sat at my little desk, playing video games, scrolling Twitter, looking at pictures of nature on Pinterest, and accidentally burning my toes on the boiling radiator that never seemed to spread heat anywhere beyond itself.
The old fear of being judged got worse; it became more like paranoia. In isolation, I started to fear people hurting me. I couldn’t tell anyone these thoughts.
I created furiously through this period: drawings, bad poems and melodramatic stories. Creativity again became the outlet for emotions I couldn’t clearly conceptualize. It was the one thing that continued to keep me grounded, even as my condition worsened.
One day in March of 2021, I made a rare outing to the store. I remember speed walking home, vague fears of other people overwhelming me. My heart beat so hard and fast in my chest it felt almost concave. I was just about to begin running when I felt a slight pressure on my shoulder.
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I jumped.
Turning around, through the blur of tears, I saw an elderly man.
“Excuse me, could you tell me the time?”
A question. The time. An hour and a minute. Where can I find that answer? My phone. My phone is in my pocket. I’ll have to look down, break eye contact. Is that OK? Is it OK to look in his eyes in the first place? His eyes are small and blue, terrifyingly blue.
“I.. ah. Um. Sorry, um…” I turn around, my apartment is just down the street. The man looks at me expectantly, with those petrifying eyes.
I run. I don’t look back. As I collapse on my bed, drenched in sweat, I think to myself maybe something is wrong with me. But I don’t tell anyone.
Diagnosis
Eighth grade continued much the same. As I continued to refuse outings or even runs to the grocery store, my parents insisted that I see a therapist, who I only met with over zoom a handful of times.
After one or two sessions, she asked, “Have you considered that you may be dealing with agoraphobia?”
Seeing my confused face, the therapist explained, “It’s when…” she paused, “you’re afraid of embarrassing situations.”
Isn’t everyone afraid of embarrassing situations? To this day, I’m not sure why she provided such a vague definition. A google search told me that it’s an anxiety disorder “that causes a fear of being in places or situations where escape may be difficult,” and makes people afraid of public spaces and leaving the home. Looking back, I wish she had been more specific. I had simply adjusted to this anxiety and accepted it as normal.
For the rest of 8th grade, which was still remote learning, I didn’t really think about her diagnosis, because staying inside remained easy.
Outside
It was my mom who first pushed me out of my room and onto the path out of agoraphobia. The summer after 8th grade, my parents and I spent a month house-sitting in a small town in upstate New York. For most of the month, I refused to join my parents on their excursions, content to trace the sunlight on the trees through my bedroom window or savor the fresh air from the front porch.
On a cloudy afternoon, my parents announced that we were all going to a small nature reserve up north. My mom headed off my refusal: “Aster, I don’t care if you don’t want to go. I know you don’t want to go. You’re going.”
I protested; my mom insisted. From the backseat, despite myself, I was struck by the beauty that played out before my eyes without the filter of a computer screen.
Lush grass waved around us, green and soft and vast. It was like walking through the fur of some great, marvelous beast.
As we approached the park, I winced as I watched a family climb up the hilly trail. I still felt terrified by people. After we parked, I silently trailed behind my parents, trying my hardest to be angry at them, and mostly just being scared.
As we entered the park, lush grass waved around us, green and soft and vast. It was like walking through the fur of some great, marvelous beast. I could almost feel the earth breathe as the grass rose and fell with the breeze.
I wandered away from my parents. I felt the sheer magnitude of life, of how small I was. For the first time that smallness didn’t scare me, and feelings of exhilaration began to drown out my cruel inner voice.
Then it started to rain, and the mean inner dialogue that usually ran through my mind was silenced by the hum of rain crashing into the dirt. I was filled with a scary but beautiful sense of newness.
I began to crave more nature. For the next few weeks, I accompanied my mom to the grocery store or the farmer’s market, just to look at the trees bursting with viridian leaves, beautiful old houses, the occasional farm with cows and horses freckled across expansive fields. The wind rushing in through the passenger seat window reawakened my enthusiasm for life.
My Friends Felt Safe
I thought back to the therapist’s diagnosis, and for the first time it was useful. Recontextualizing my fear as a condition eventually made me realize that it was not something I had to live with.
Returning to the city was hard. Idyllic green landscapes are easier for an agoraphobe than the crushing noise and people of the urban environment.
I didn’t necessarily miss being around people. But with my new perspective on the world I recognized that completely sequestering myself was not healthy. And I wanted to share my passions with like-minded people.
On the first day of 9th grade, a girl my age, Naima, asked me what kind of anime I liked after I mentioned it in class. Swallowing my fear, I answered, and then we were talking. Despite the months I had spent agonizing over it, socializing with her was somehow easy. She eventually became my first friend since my isolation had begun. Now, she’s my bandmate.
Slowly, my confidence grew. On a spring day in 9th grade, I switched my black t-shirt and jeans for a colorful dress, wanting to express the brightness within me. As I walked down the street I could feel people’s eyes on me, and the familiar anxiety. But I knew that in embracing that fear I could experience a far happier existence. There was more beauty out in the world.
At the end of freshman year, I went out with friends for the first time in a year and a half: That might be when my 18-month agoraphobic episode came to a close. We went to a restaurant, and I enjoyed the food. There were people there, strangers who could hurt me or judge me or hate me. But my friends felt safe in a way friends didn’t use to. I sat at the table, ate good food, and walked home slowly, savoring this new life.
Now, it’s three years later, and my band Divine Intervention is practicing in Midtown. The band is my friend Naima on vocals, Addie on drums, and me on guitar. We’re playing Violet by Hole. We’re not particularly good, but we’re getting better. As I play the wrong guitar chord and Addie smashes a cymbal, we collectively exhale, look at each other, and laugh.
“Dude, Kathleen Hanna is going to be begging us to open for Bikini Kill any day now,” says Naima.
“Of course, how could she not???” I reply. Somehow, this rapport between us had become so natural I couldn’t imagine life without it.
Divine Intervention emerges onto the streets surrounding Bryant Park, and we meet up with a few friends to eat in Koreatown. Midtown is loud and smells bad and there are lots of people. I don’t mind. The music we just made, the canopy of trees above my head, and the infectious laughter of my friends carries me through fear.
I still spend some days inside, and I’m still kind of self-defeating and fearful. Maybe that’s just the person I am. But I am much more than that, and I don’t define myself by that fear. I’m not agoraphobic anymore.
The Author
