Being a Shut-In

To be clear up front: I'm making this thread to talk about this type of situation, the feelings that come along with it, and to try to be proactive in changing my situation bit by bit so I can stop being like this because it's not getting any easier going forward to live like this.

Background:

Spoiler

Prior to Covid, I was already primed to be a shut in since I was a pre-teen. I was anxious and paranoid, untreated mental illness running wild in public. I didn't feel safe anywhere but my bedroom. However, my journey started very specifically when I first moved into Hell House with my cousins under supervision of my uncle from a distance, after I'd already gotten married.

It was 2012 I believe. I was living in the master bedroom with attached bathroom of that house. The environment was chaotic and didn't feel safe whatsoever, so I tended to keep the door locked and the windows shades drawn despite being on the second floor facing the woods in the backyard. I was attending a few community college courses but was severely depressed and very mentally unwell. It was my own personal hell when I got a retail job to keep food in our stomachs, because I was so paranoid of accepting further help from my uncle I didn't want to use the money in the account he'd given me.

When my spouse left to join the army and do his training, I lost all sense of time and place. I stayed up for days at a time, to the point of micro-sleeps happening during wakefulness, sometimes even while driving. I ignored all phone calls, all contact from family unless I was forced to respond to them. All I wanted to do was sleep, draw, and fuck around online in my little fantasy world as much as I could. I RPed constantly, and made a few friends. At that point I still left the house once in a while because one of those friends happened to be somewhat local, and there was also a Homestuck group that had meet ups every few months for little things. But aside from that and going to get food.. that was it. For two years.

Then I moved to Italy, once my ex was assigned there. I cut off all remaining family entirely. I couldn't travel around because just getting to the bus killed me physically from my chronic illnesses. We moved to a nearer location on a disability notice, and even then it was still hard because I had to walk the entire base to get to the clinic for appointments. I couldn't go grocery shopping without getting rides from people with a car. I lived in the dark, barely slept, had next to no contact with the outside world, and continued to live online. I started to finally get some mental health help but wasn't properly diagnosed at the time and was still dealing with the stress of a terrible marriage I wasn't prepared to admit was bad. We were there for three long, hellish, lonely years.

Then we moved to Ohio. My marriage fell apart the rest of the way and eventually exploded over the course of about a year. We had no car, my license was long expired, we had nothing by the time I asked for a divorce. I was living with a friend in a spare room she happened to have. Things looked up for the first time in a long while. I got Medicaid and SSI, I signed up for college again, I started therapy and got a proper diagnosis, I started to get stable mentally. It was, and still is, a fucking SLOG at all times. But there was definite progress. I had goals. All my courses were online because I couldn't physically go downtown. I went to conventions every few months and hung around with friends. I continued to keep up my online relationships and made more online friends.

But I was still a shut in. I lived in my room, on my bed, propped up, too physically sick to sit upright too long or go places on my own without keeling over immediately. I left the house very little, only to go get food or to grab something at a store I wanted to go to, or to go to many doctors appointments or to take proctored exams for the school because Online Class apparently meant Online Till We Say So. I got more depressed. I got disillusioned. I got lost. I dove headlong into therapy even harder. I took a break from school.

Now I'm still in that position, sort of. I'm not physically well enough to just up and go places. I don't have much independence and it makes me constantly anxious. I've got a mini pharmacy at this point of medications that sincerely do help keep things stable, and I'm in therapy weekly, and I try to do as much self work as I can. But it can only go so far. I do online classes for a new major and only leave the house for doctor appointments and to get groceries.

People terrify me. The outside world terrifies me. Nothing feels safe outside of my room, not really. I can hear and feel people staring and laughing at me, talking about me behind my back, saying all the things I already think about myself. It's like there's a huge spotlight focused on me so everyone notices how fucked up I look when I'm symptomatic and faltering. I try to fake it till I make it but just wind up vibrating on the inside. I can look calm and collected on the bus but be constantly running circles in panic on the inside convinced I'll miss my stop, that people will be looking at me, that i'm taking up too much space in the seat, that I smell or something, that I'm obviously failing at being human, that I'm not dressed right, that I should've worn makeup, that somehow I'm trespassing among the Normal People.

I don't want to be like this forever. It's lonely. I fear for the future. If I keep deteriorating physically, what happens to me then? I have no family left alive, no local friends. I have no classmates or coworkers because I do online classes and can't hold down a job. If I want to graduate I'll have to have 400 logged hours of placed field work under my belt, so I need to figure out how to get through some of this before senior year at minimum. I want to at least be able to function well enough to leave the house and show up where I'm meant to be and try to do a good job. I want to get a job someday. I want to meet someone, have a relationship again. I want to go places. Experience things. I've always watched other people do these things so easily and was so so jealous, because even as a teen I didn't experience that. It just seems like some people have everything figured out and then there's people like me who are just... faltering.

 

My original plan to take steps was to take an in person class next semester. Force myself to go to campus once or twice a week, be responsible and all that. Be sitting in a group setting and interacting with other humans as a requirement. But alas, when I checked the classes I need this semester against the master schedule, the locations are too far from bus stops for me to access easily. So online it is again this time.

My backup plan now is to just. Go to campus, go to the union, and sit doing some work on my ipad with an iced coffee or something each week. Maybe eat lunch. I'll be isolated and silent still, because nobody'll talk to me there because they don't know me, but I'll at least be outside and getting fresh air and being near human beings physically. Maybe it'll lessen the fear somewhat.

 

Not overstepping at all, I'm very open to this being a discussion area.

 

I'm hopeful for this new plan but very nervous as well, because without the "You are required to attend so you don't fail/waste tuition money" thing strong arming me into it, it's all going to rely on me and my own power. And I don't exactly have the best track record of making myself go places...

 

Thinking more on how this started, I think I was like. primed by my family to be like this. My mother had the paradoxical desire for me to be a social butterfly and be out and about, but also from a very young age impressed on me how dangerous the outside world was and how strangers all have the worst intentions and how at any moment I could be assaulted. Like. To the point her own sisters were baffled when I said I was afraid to walk on their literal one neighbor gravel road in the middle of a cornfield without someone going with me. I used to go to the pool each summer growing up, and as I got a bit older I'd walk on my own since it was literally one block away from home. I'd spend all day there. When I turned... 12 I wanna say? 13? I was suddenly so anxious I couldn't set foot outside all summer. I didn't want to be seen. I was convinced I was a monster. The idea of being seen in a swimsuit was nauseatingly terrifying. So I just... stayed home. Stayed in my room like I usually was anyway, and ignored any questions of if I was going to the pool. My mom got angry at me and said I was "A little old woman living in a teenagers body", with venom in it to show how disgusted she was with the situation of me not going anywhere.

I already missed a lot of school growing up for health reasons and because my parents arguing would either keep me up all night or they just wouldn't feel like taking me in. As the anxiety got worse I'd play sick and stay home as often as I could. By high school, after dad died and we'd moved, I just... almost stopped going entirely because it was so overwhelming to be around strangers in such close quarters for hours at a time while being quizzed on things I never learned in my district. My mom argued and screamed, but didn't really do anything else. She was pissed when I eventually dropped out because the idea of repeating senior year at that hellhole was too much, but aside from screaming at me, again didn't have much to say. I isolated even then. Home, and my room specifically, was a safe space. Even when home wasn't safe growing up, my room was. My room had my things, distraction, eventually internet and better escapsim.

It's difficult not to view my room as the only safe space when, historically, that's what it's been for me.

 

I'm noticing a distinction. If I have a Set Goal, like running errands (groceries, kitty litter, meds) I can handle it easier. If I have a ride there, it's even easier, because I know I can 100% get home afterwards no matter where I go. If I have to take public transport I think it's blending with the chronic illness and knowledge I'll be extremely symptomatic while I'm out to become fear of getting trapped outside of the home. It's why I can't get myself to go for walks, even short aimless ones, because I'm half convinced I'll get out there and Something Will Happen and I'll be unable to get back to the safety of home. If I have a Set Task, however, I can kinda circumvent that mental programming by going "Well I HAVE to go or I'll get in trouble/have to go without Important Thing/get sicker (if it's a doctor visit) and because I HAVE to go I have to make my way back afterwards in one piece somehow no matter what."

I used to like traveling, though it also was heavily dependent on having a Home Base + someone with me most of the time because being alone was scary. But once I got divorced I did have a period of just.. enjoying going on the bus on my own. Like, I'd never experienced buses before really aside from the bit in Italy, they were novel and fun. They still kind of are. Once I'm ON the bus I feel secure enough, because it's enclosed, and even if I'm paranoid about all the other people on there and the driver I can at least usually fuck around on my phone or watch the world go by so I don't miss my stop. But getting TO the bus to get on it is an entire other circumstance that I'm realizing is a struggle.

I recently had tried to start my physical therapy again, to force myself out of the house and to see if it'd help THIS time. I got a sheet of home exercises to do for the POTS and a recommendation to do cardio to strengthen my heart and circulatory system. I recently panic canceled all the appointments and now I'm too ashamed to try making more, so I need to figure out how to get myself to do the home exercise sheet so I'm at least doing SOMETHING for my body that's potentially positive even if it isn't a cure or guaranteed to help me.

 

I was very much in danger during/after a bad part of life of becoming a complete recluse. Unfortunately the thing that got me out was getting a basically full-time job, because I'd expended all my savings and had moved back in with my parents (I was considered a part-timer but worked 39 hours most weeks). I say unfortunately because it sounds like your health prevents that from being a realistic step right now.

Would some kind of daily log thread for the home exercises work if you had to post each day to kintsugi that you had done them, or would that only make your anxiety spike at the thought of missing or skipping a day? I sometimes do better if I am reporting to another person, even if there is no reward or punishment for it either way.

 

I've got no idea honestly. Just doing the exercises at all is anxiety inducing, because they make me symptomatic and ouch, so it's hard for me to want to do them purposefully. I don't get the Good Feeling people claim to get after exercise, i just feel more and more run down till i can't do anything after a while, stop, recover, then start again. :/ Supposedly if i can keep them up for like.... 6-9 months I might see some changes if I'm lucky, from what doctors have said...? But that's. a hell of a lot of investment and frustration and misery for a Maybe, it's really hard to get my brain to want to do it even if I should be pushing for that maybe as hard as I can...

 

my appointment to get an eye exam is at a walmart reachable by bus on the 15th. i could ask my roomie for a ride there and just ride back home on my own but. i'm. gonna try to get there AND back on my own, so multi-bus trip and more time around people.

 

i am weak and cheating already. i'm getting dropped off at the walmart tomorrow. BUT I'm gonna be there the entire time on my own, and getting myself home by bus still, so I think it still kind of counts. maybe next appointment i have somewhere i'll go all on my own both ways.

 

mission..... kind of successful? I didn't end up on the bus. At all. My roomie dropped me off then decided to just. Stay there. In the parking lot. For like 2 hours. I had no idea it'd take that long, they had to dilate my eyes bc there was some discrepancies in my exam and they were having trouble finding prisms in my glasses despite my last prescription having prism in them, and then not showing up as needed in the exam...? Confusing. But either way. I WAS alone in the Walmart in the quiet part of the eyeglasses center, so. ....I don't know. Mission success: glasses happening, but mission failure for Going Somewhere Alone And Getting Out of House.

bonus: awkward stiff conversation with my roomie when the appointment was over on the ride home, feeling like I was in trouble despite it being her choice to stay, making me feel like I should've just. Not gone. At all.

so. now i'm home, exploding in the kiln from going out and all of that and her having her interview this morning, and just kind of feeling rising dread. im gonna collapse in a heap and eat graham crackers now.

 

my glasses are already done, but i have no way to get there during the weekend bc i can't reach the main bus routes from home without access to the campus bus. new plan is getting them monday, on my own, by bus both ways. no weaseling out of it this time.

 

so much for that plan, im sick now with something l m f a o so im getting a ride there and back instead either tomorrow or tuesday depending on how i feel tomorrow because we've got stuff to pick up at the store too.

im just. really really not good at this forming and sticking to plans thing. either i puss out and stall or avert, or my body fucking betrays me and i have to ask for help. :') idk what to do after this to try pushing myself lmfao.

 

Spent the 28th-1st of january at my roomies extended family's home, like I did a few years ago. Majority of the time was just... playing videogames quietly on the couch on my switch, and the last day was spent tucked into a side room because apparently my using the sofa had taken a space away from someone else who was wanting to watch the constant stream of sports on tv and nobody told me till my roomie came and offered me the spot. So. Around people but not around people, if that makes sense. Was a nice reset, change of environment, but. Wasn't that satisfying at the same time. I was mostly just glad to come home and cuddle my cat.

 

on the up side tho i got to use my ipad a bit finally, and kinda understand more of how it works. or at least i understand it enough that it would be a viable thing to take to campus with me in the future. near future. i should start doing campus this month. shit. i am not ready.

 

we're halfway through feb and... I still haven't managed to get myself to go to campus once. the desire isn't even there. my mental health has been a bit of a mess lately, and I'm sure getting out of the house would help a bit with that in the end, but I'm so fucking anxious at the idea that I stall and don't even consider it as an option. Hell, I haven't even really been doing leisure activities for weeks. i don't watch shows or read manga or books, i agonize for hours wanting to do those things then never do. the bit of anime i've watched recently was so fucking relaxing i thought i was gonna melt.

 

Okay. Actionable steps to leave the house for at least an hour at a time is in motion. Starting Feb.... I wanna say 27th? There's five or six hour long meetings at a campus building i can reach VERY easily by bus. As in the bus stops right in front of the fucking building. They're put on by the writing center and the local affiliated Cancer center, and are about writing grief. Between my own personal experiences with grief and knowing I'll be dealing with others experiencing grief should all go well and I get to have a career, it seemed like a good idea to go for it bc it's free. I'm nervous. I'm very nervous. But this is a chance to force myself to do a thing AND have a reason to show up AND make an impact for my future by my own volition bc this isn't a required thing I'd just be doing it because I wanted to.

very nervous. but. hopeful i've made a good choice. now to not back out.

 

the first meeting is on the 27th and i am fucking petrified.

 

i am not going to jinx myself but the weather apparently is calling for thunderstorms that day :')