Tuesday 20 July 2010

The town mouse and the country mouse

I think that was some kind of children's book, but I can't remember the moral of that story. Didn't the country mouse get eaten by cats at... now WHY do I want to say at a mouse strip club? What kind of warped childhood did I have to conjure that mental image?! Maybe the moral of the story there is that mice/country-folk/strip club patrons are stupid? Hit me up if you know what I'm talking about... or I suppose I could wiki it. But more fun to beg for comments instead.

The problems that face me day to day are quite different from normal M.E. sufferers mainly because we live out here in the middle of the country. When I was growing up we lived in a suburban wasteland, sprawling rows and patterns of identikit houses with nothing in between and the only way to do anything was to get on the train to Glasgow. Not long after I finished my exams and dropped out of school we moved house, into much more of a traditional town – voted the most generic in Britain, in fact, so that's one aspect of my experience that should be identifiable with! It brought its own issues with it, mainly being that with my new health levels I was unable to get out to make any new friends to replace the ones I'd lost from school, and I've more or less been on my own since.

The next step though, about 5 or so years ago (I've lost count), was moving out to the country. It was only half an hour down the road, but for an agoraphobic.. the move itself wasn't nice. Maybe one day I'll do a deep dark entry about it, but to keep myself sane for just now I'll leave it as just saying it was very, very tough, and has taken me a long time to get over. Having your entire safe zone evaporate on you and forcing you to make any sort of trek out into the unknown to try and set up a new one is not something I'd be in a rush to do again, but then I'd hope that where I am mentally now would let me be a lot more equipped to deal with it.

So in a piece about country life, I'm onto my 4th paragraph and that's us only just filled in on the background to it. In some ways, things have been really good here. I love that I can look out the window and see deer, birds, that last night when I was particularly wiped out I could just sit and watch a wild baby rabbit chewing on a leaf for long enough to let my frantic jumbled mess of half-ideas and theories about pokémon maths melt away. The quiet and tranquillity has been good for me, with no background noise (both literally and metaphorically!) to impose itself on the tasks I've managed to come a long long way with all my other anxieties and problems that sadly tend to come as standard with the set of conditions I've got. The big one though, the one that's standing between me and whatever could pass for an attempt at 'normality', is going out.

So far most of the people who have admitted to reading this have found it through connections to the M.E., so might not be familiar with some of what agoraphobia actually involves. As well as the regular 'not going out' thing, other aspects to it involve people coming into your own space, and over the years I've struggled with that immensely. Phone calls, people coming to the door, workmen/window cleaners/gas man, all add to the wonderful package to come and find you even when you're curled up in a ball hiding from the world wishing it would go away. Literally hiding from a ringing telephone as if it can see you when your friends and peers are off getting drunk and partying at uni isn't a particularly nice way to live your life, and I'm very grateful and proud that I've managed to almost totally overcome that aspect of the condition.

We recently had a massive, multi-month project going on in our house when we had building work going on on the conservatory, and despite everyone secretly fearing the worst and preparing contingency plans to try and get me through it, it passed without a hitch. I can handle people coming to the house, either planned or unexpectedly, socialise with friends of the family, keep appointments with doctors and OTs. I can even go for walks on the moor (and in the rain), as far as my physical constraints will allow me. I've come a long long way with that side of it, and maybe I should take more chances like this to look back at how things were and be grateful that I've cut the number of limiting factors on my life down from however many there were to just the one or two now. But context is everything, and what I find now looking back at my time living in a town is that I don't remember how bad it was having the busyness and noise imposing on my ability to step back and recharge, and instead just pine for the time when it was within my grasp to go for an eye test, grab a McFlurry, even (at a push, admittedly) making it to the cinema.

I suppose that, like in so many other ways, I'm very lucky to have been born into this digital age, since so much of what I need can now be taken care of via the internet. I don't have to miss out on the newest films and games with sites like Amazon that deliver to my home, and I can still stay in the loop in terms of discussing the football and pop culture happenings via forums and messenger services. But its the simple things that can't be substituted that make this system fall down.

About 18 months ago, I somehow managed to trip over nothing in an empty room and broke/tore something in my foot. I couldn't walk for quite some time, but it was impossible to get it properly seen to – I'll probably get an x-ray on it later in life to discover that it was broken and never properly reset. I've had blocked ears and had to try and keep hold of my sanity for weeks or months with no hearing while I wait for the waiting list for home doctor visits for non-urgent procedures to slowly trickle down. When my general anxiety was still bad, I was terrified that I was going to break my glasses and I'd be effectively blind unless I made it out to the opticians to get new ones. It's still pretty restrictive being stuck in like this, because the last lingering thread that won't go away is the ability to go out in the car.

There's a tiny village a mile down the road, and on a good day, I can manage that. I've been to vote, there's a village shop that I can go to to stock up on Pringles and Nuts magazines, and there's a recycling bank where I can go when I want to feel good about myself saving the earth. The next step, the one that could make so much of my boredom and loneliness go away, is a decent sized little town... 6 miles away.

Six miles. There are bridges and tunnels longer than that, but its beyond my limit. Tunnels in Norway where the entire distance through them is longer than I can manage out in the car. 12 minutes, if we go slowly enough along the road to admire the scenery. 3 and a half songs, I couldn't even finish listening to Pixie Lott's greatest hits before I'd arrived, but... its beyond me.

I was making so much progress, too, from the start of the year I could barely manage anything. Now, I've managed more than halfway there. I can quite comfortably do maybe the first third of it, jump in the car and make it down to a junction in the road without so much as a flutter. It seemed like it was all coming so easily, from nothing to what felt in those early days like everything, as if it was finally over and I was within touching distance of being free of it. We even worked out the distance to the nearest uni – all I have to be able to do is manage an extra mile a month, and I'd be able to enrol for classes next term. So easy, I almost forgot there was anything wrong in the first place.

One day, with the sun shining and the stars aligned, I made it as far as the garden centre on the outskirts of the town. Probably about 5 miles. It was the most I'd done, barring one disastrous attempt, since we moved here. And I just... couldn't breathe. Apparently its one thing getting there and back, but once you're there... you have to keep yourself together in that unsafe place, outside your comfort zone, and not only that, but prepare yourself mentally for the journey back. It was a horrible realisation, it all seemed so easy when I was taking the 10 minutes to get myself ready to face the trip out, but to keep myself together and conscious in another, unfamiliar place, and find the strength again to do it all again to get home was just... too much. I've had to try and come to terms with that since then, the reason why my progress has stalled was the reason that it needed worked on in the first place.

To most people, getting somewhere and back are just the bookends on an experience. They're the unnoticed, blank spaces in the schedule, you write off an hour's travel time to get where you need to be. To me, they're poisonous, oozing. They cover and coat anything in between them, going beyond just ruining the day out, but leeching everything that's good and fun and worthwhile out of it. The most beautiful experience, the most fulfilling, rewarding, eye-opening, it wouldn't just be bookended by a spot of discomfort, it'd have everything good ripped out of it and spoiled, degrading my achievements and my experiences to just the horrible recharging gap in the middle, the time where I had to try and keep myself together long enough to find the strength to come back home again.

I don't know how I'm going to get past this. I don't know how to solve a problem that trying harder at or putting more effort in can't fix. So far it seems that the best hope lies in expanding my safe zone, getting familiar with the road and eventually the town, letting me feel free to move about within it as I please and once the net gets wide enough, my quality of life should get a big increase. It's only 6 miles. The other end of that tunnel... and I shouldn't complain that I've come far enough to see that light, if not quite reach it.

I'm sorry for the length of this entry. I don't expect anyone to sit through it, but if you do I would love to hear from you. Drop me a line on MSN or the comments. I'll buy you chocolate.

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