People are weird. I am weird. You, dear reader, are weird. It is inevitable and I have dealt with that but I’m sick of people staring at me like I’m a serial killer in the making. Therapists, family, “friends”, you name it, they all treat me like I’m a ticking time bomb.  Just because I prefer the company of myself to the millions of idiots outside my comfort zone, or because I dress in colors that aren’t purely pastels, doesn’t make me “crazy”. It makes me Jenn and if you have a problem with that then you should probably stop staring and whispering as if I can’t hear you. I can hear you and you sound like you’ve been touched in the head due to your insatiable ignorance. Grow the fuck up. Read a goddamn book. Stop thinking that “different” means wrong. Because, in the grand scheme of things, the “different” people are the ones that are going to end up doing more than pumping gas or asking daily if you “want fries with that”. When I finally leave the house for good, I am going to kick the world’s ass with my ideas.

I honestly didn’t expect you guys. I hope you find my babysteps somewhat entertaining and I just want you all to know that, if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always here for you, lovelies. 

Today I went to the home I grew up in for the first time in in six years. The new tenants allowed me to take a look inside. Everything felt so unreal. I laughed in spite of myself when I walked into what used to be my old bedroom and saw that it had become an exercise room. Old memories flooded back to me of when I was little and decided that painting the carpet would give the room more character, that floor was now hardwood and cold, nothing at all like it had once been.

The kitchen was completely new but I could still see an eight year old version of myself crawling on the floor with a tiger mask meowing and insisting that my mother call me “Precious” as well as scratch behind my ear as if I wanted her to actually believe that I was a cat. Of course, being the amazing mother that she is/was, she happily went along with my little game. The kitchen had a certain charm to it back then but now it was decorated as, what some would call, “edgy and modern”. Once again, nothing at all like it had once been.

I meandered through the house that I knew so well and yet seemed so strange to me until I found the bathroom. This was a room that held even more odd memories. Suddenly, I was six years old again and just hanging out in the bathroom as if that was a normal pass time. My older sister, Paige, was in the living room with a group of friends. I toyed around with my surroundings until a familiar smell struck my senses and my six year old brain couldn’t stop me from screaming out, “I SMELL PERIOD”. Needless to say my sister was livid and after scolding me I could hear her informing her friends that she wasn’t even on her period. In my opinion, she was only digging her grave deeper. I never accused her of it being her time of the month. I had another sister and a mother who was still quite young. To this day, few things bring me as much joy as that story.

My hand grazed the wall of the long hallway I had once claimed to have seen the ghost of my grandmother in, I’m not quite sure even now if I actually did see Grammy or if it was just a nightmare since it had seemed so real all those years ago, until I reached the living room once more. A few feet ahead of me stood a door, inviting and already open to my dismay. Above that door used to be a large stainless steel four leaf clover due to my father’s Irish pride but now there was nothing. I hadn’t expected any different since the aforementioned clover rested peacefully in a drawer at my current residence. I slowly eased my way into the room, watching my step as I did so, remembering the small step that was the cause of many spilled drinks and a broken plate that my mother loved. I immediately was in tears.

This room had once belonged to my father, my daddy, who will have been dead for six years this November. The room had once been called “The Cave” due to the fact that it was almost always completely dark save for my father’s reading lamp. The walls were once lined with books even though he had shelves already built into the walls, he was a big reader which is something he passed on to me, now there were no books but his shelves still remained. I didn’t dare touch them though for fear that the sensation would make me realize that this was all truly happening, that I was home and my daddy was dead. 

I closed my eyes in a feeble attempt to stop the tears but that only made it worse. With closed eyes, the room was exactly how it had been so many years ago. I could even hear my father and I laughing as we read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet out loud to each other in very dramatic ways and with me tripping over almost every word. He would never mock me though, oh no, he would teach me the words and their meanings and assure me that even he had trouble with Shakespeare once, I always found that nearly impossible to believe because in my eyes he was the smartest man on the planet, and he would punctuate these comforting sentences with the nickname he had given me when I was born. Princess.

This was also the room that I witnessed him have a seizure in. I’ll never be able to erase the mental image of him with blood dripping from his mouth because he bit down on his tongue to hard and the distance he had in his eyes. This image still haunts me in my dreams, while I’m awake, anytime. I think it always will.

Soon after this I decided it was time to go even though part of me wished that I could stay forever with my memories, even the bad ones. I thanked the current residents multiple times and told them that I hope they’re happy there before finally taking my leave.

This was one of the biggest steps I’ve taken in months, even if I did close all of the doors behind me and turn on a ceiling fan or two, and it felt amazing. I felt like I had finally done something worth being proud of. I finally conquered my agoraphobia, even if it was just for a few hours. The next step I hope to take is visiting my childhood church and confessing to Father M but, I have to remember, babysteps. 

I’m agoraphobic, obsessive compulsive, severely ADHD, and have issues with anxiety. Every day I’m like a ticking time bomb, meaning that the littlest thing can set me off and all of a sudden breathing becomes an almost impossible task. There are certain things that tend to set me off more than others, some I can’t even explain, such as open doors and not having a fan going in my room 24/7 (I have two going right now) and for as long as I can remember I’ve had these little quirks but, the older I get, the worse they become.

For instance, the other day my mother and I were watching the season premiere of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one of my favorite shows, when my brother in law walked in the room leaving the door open. I immediately got up and shut the door, something I’ve grown accustomed to doing around people who don’t know the severity of my anxiety, he then went back and opened after I had sat down. I’m assuming he thought of this as a joke and did not mean it in a cruel way, either way I once again got up and shut the door but this time my hands were shaking almost uncontrollably and I was almost in tears. I don’t know anyone who could honestly tell me that this was normal.

These things happen nearly every day to me and it’s making life that much harder to muddle through. I usually stay locked up in my room so as to avoid becoming hysterical over little things that wouldn’t make the average person bat an eye. I have almost completely succeeded in isolating myself from the rest of the world and at one point in my life, there was nothing I wanted more than isolation, but now I find myself craving actual human interaction but when you’re as out of practice and as odd as I, finding people to put up with you is a quite hard task. Fuck.