One minute outside
A winter held together by small steps and an absence that will not ease.
Most of my days are structured around the smallest movements. Agoraphobia makes even simple tasks expand into long sequences. Washing, dressing, eating and getting up happen in careful fragments. To answer the front door, I must open my bedroom door, cross the landing, walk downstairs and move through a narrow enclosed space before stepping outside. Each part asks something of me. Each part is its own held breath.
Today I managed one minute outdoors. One slow, fragile minute. The air felt sharp and the fear rose quickly, but I stayed. Then I came back inside and waited for my heartbeat to settle.
The Flow headset stings in its familiar way. I still do not know whether it helps. Perhaps the hope that it might is its own kind of thread, thin but present. I had another stimulation session today. But I was so in shock from the news about the holidays that the session felt performative. And I decided to buy the damn thing; friends are splitting the cost three ways (I’m paying my third), so now I’m committed and also received replacement pads. Point is that it all costs money and I don’t know if it is going to work, clinging to the thread of a device that one of the NHS psychiatrists I saw in hospital recently likened to “mesmorisation” - while he and his colleague smugly dismissed the evidence base entirely, even though a handful of NHS trusts are using the device and rTMS and rTDS are being used routinely and life-changingly in NHS trusts and private clinics to treat treatment resistant severe depression.
And then there is the agoraphobia and anxiety. What strikes me most is how these conditions strip life down to its smallest bones, and how isolating it becomes when the people who are supposed to know and love you cannot bear to see you this way. Connection with others who understand is not optional. It is a form of survival. It is a reminder that a single minute outside can mean something profound when your world has narrowed to the size of a landing or encountering an unfamiliar man in your shared living space where you already don’t feel safe.
Tonight there are no neat conclusions. Only the truth that I am here, taking the next step, however small.