Elevators. Closets. Basements. Even being in a small room with the windows covered - every closed space you can imagine is my worst nightmare.
For all of my twenty-nine years of life, I have been severely claustrophobic. I don’t mean that I’m a little uncomfortable in small spaces. I mean that I’m absolutely, overwhelmingly petrified of any place in which I don’t have an easy escape. I break into a cold sweat just by thinking of the minute elevators in the nearby department building. My brother’s college dorm, with its one small window, devolved me into a hyperventilating mess. Don’t even get me started on the time a friend thought it would be funny to send me pictures of those Hong Kong coffin apartments.
Despite trying every form of exposure therapy and anti-anxiety medication, the phobia never fully subsided. And to the frustration of many a therapist, I’ve never thought it important to dive into the “root” of my fear. It’s always just been a part of me.
I like to think that my claustrophobia doesn’t rule my life. Sure, I have a few life changes - my house has an open floor plan with plenty of big windows, and I blocked off the attic the day I moved in. I call restaurants ahead of time to make sure I can be on the main level, near an exit. I won’t go underground, especially in basements or subways, or too far above ground, because of the necessity of elevators. I work from home - but come on, that one isn’t even unusual nowadays. So though I take my Ativan and log in for my weekly teletherapy appointment (my therapist’s office was a little too “cozy” for my comfort), I don’t think I’m abnormal in any way.
But when I met Lucas, that changed.
I know, I know, don’t change yourself for a man, but Lucas was the sweetest, most angelic golden-retriever-boy I’d ever met. Blonde hair, blue eyes, 6 ft, my mom loved him… the total package. He was even a structural engineer. The guy was a constantly smiling ray of sunshine, and he was refreshingly fearless.
However, Lucas also lived in a below-ground apartment.
It was just while he got started in his career - after all, since he spent so much time away at work, why pay more for a nicer place? The logic was sound, but that didn’t change the shaky feeling I had even just thinking of it. So I never went. Instead, he came over to my house.
After a while of dating, though, I think this started to bug him. Not just the apartment thing - the fact that I’d spend ten minutes struggling up the stairs to avoid a quick elevator ride up to his office on the 21st floor. My flat-out refusal to go to his favorite bar, a basement speakeasy. The way I blew a gasket when he opened the previously untouched attic hatch on my ceiling.
It made me feel so crazy, so ashamed - the look of disappointment and confusion on his usually-cheerful face. So one night, when Lucas hesitantly pitched an idea over dinner, I forced myself to swallow my terror.
“Maybe we could do our own kind of exposure therapy? I’ll help you, and you can take your meds all you want. We’ll go slow, Jane, I promise. Just so you can try and live a normal life.”
A normal life. God, this unsure proposal was the first time I felt I wasn’t “normal” already. The realization pierced me like a spear through the heart.
But his big blue eyes, full of hope, gave me the tiniest ounce of courage.
“Okay.” My voice was just a whisper, and he lunged around the table to envelope me in a hug.
Our “therapy” began the next day. Lucas had apparently done quite a bit of reading up on phobias, and he decided the best thing to start with would be simply closing the blinds to the windows in my house.
I sat in the living room with shaking hands, staring at the carpet, as I watched the dancing sunny reflections start to dim.
“Practice your breathing exercises,” Lucas urged.
I’d almost forgotten about them. Obediently, I put my shoulders back and placed my tongue on the roof of my mouth.
In. 2. 3. 4.
Hold. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Out. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
I needed to focus on my air moving in and out of my lungs. Not the fact that it was starting to feel like the walls were closing in.
Shaking my head to clear my mind, I looked around. The walls appeared darker, giving the room a tighter appearance than it did in the light. The windows were shrouded in black, only a faint light emanating from the edge of the blinds.
Lucas had completely shaded the first floor now. Every time I exhaled, I could feel the breath being squeezed from my lungs. Like my entire body was being compressed by the closing walls and darkness.
Calm down. Calm down. It’s just a cover on the window, there’s still air.
Where was Lucas? I felt completely alone in my own home. I stood up. “L-Lucas?”
My voice came out small and terrified. I sunk to the ground, curled into the fetal position. My head ached as if it there were tight bands around my skull, my brain being pulled inwards by some horrible gravitational force. The racing pulse of my heart made my breath skip and sputter. I squeezed my eyes closed.
“LUCAS!”
Suddenly, there were warm arms on my knees. “I’m right here, baby. It’s okay. You’re doing it, you’re doing it!”
“Open the shades,” I begged helplessly.
“Janie, open your eyes. Do the grounding exercises we talked about. What’s five things you can see?”
Blinking through the tears, I saw his angelic face in front of me. “You?” I offered.
“Keep going.”
The walls. The dark, threatening, compressing walls stealing my oxygen. No, don’t think about that. “I can… I can see the coffee table.”
“What else?”
I scanned the room. “The doorway. The lamp. The couch.”
“What about four things you can feel?”
The rug, soft beneath my feet. His hands heating my legs. The chair I leaned back against. My arms wrapped tight around my chest. Oh.
I loosened my grip, and felt the relief of some more air entering my lungs. Things were coming back into focus now. It was just my living room. It didn’t look too different than it did at night - just without the view from the window.
Lucas noticed the change and smiled his big, sunshine grin. “That doesn’t feel so scary, does it?”
I had to admit that it didn’t. As scary as the experience was, when I grounded myself, I realized nothing had really changed.
So each day, we did more DIY therapy. At first, I had to be the one closing the shades. Then I had to try to sit in my small bathroom with the door shut and shades down. Next, we tried walking up and down tight stairwells. That one really put me into a panic at first, but when I focused on the feeling of the cold metal handrail - and the door in front of me - it wasn’t so impossible. Really, it didn’t feel impossible because I had Lucas by my side. Even when he pushed me a little harder than I thought was necessary, I trusted him. It was almost funny - this man I’d met only a couple months ago could convince me to face fears I’d avoided for almost thirty years.
And so about a month into our work, Lucas decided that I had to visit his apartment. I gulped when he said it. I guess I knew that was coming, but for some reason the idea of his closed little underground place triggered my anxiety more than anything we’d tried yet.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet,” I told him gently. “Why don’t we try something above ground first?”
“You’re never going to feel ready, you’ve got to just make yourself do it!”
“I know, but it’ll take time. I want to, I promise, but I don’t want to push too hard and make the phobia worse.”
Suddenly, my boyfriend’s usually-sweet blue eyes darkened. “That’s bullshit.”
Shocked, I opened my mouth to respond, but was cut off.
“Jane, it’s not getting any worse. That’s a cop out. I thought you were ready to make a difference in your life. I thought I was enough for you to want to make your life better. I guess I’m just not enough.”
Lucas ran his hand over his face. His tone changed from anger to defeat, and he turned away from me.
“Of course you’re enough! You’re perfect! I’m just… I’m just… I’m scared.”
I grabbed his shoulder and turned him around, embracing him. He didn’t move.
“So you’ll try?” Lucas asked, his voice quiet and cool.
I wasn’t sure I’d agreed to that, but he’d been right to push me in the past, hadn’t he? “I… I guess so.”
Lucas’ arms encased me in his warmth, and my joyful partner had returned.
The next day, after taking my medication with a steaming cup of chamomile tea, I stood outside his apartment with shaky legs.
The front door was down five stairs, each one bringing me further to the small, coffin-like basement that I imagined awaited me. I got down one before stopping and sitting on the step, heart racing. Lucas’ voice came from behind the door. “You can do this, baby!”
But I couldn’t. It was as if every cell in my body, every minute atom, was screaming at me to run and never look back. I watched a dead leaf fall down by the door where I could never go, and I couldn’t help but weep.
Eventually, Lucas came out, unsmiling and holding a glass of juice. He stiffly presented it to me, and I thirstily gulped it down, exhausted by the ordeal.
“Let’s go home,” I sighed.
Lucas looked frustrated all of a sudden, his eyes darkening just as they had the night before. “But you’re almost there, Jane! Stop crying, you just need to push yourself.”
His irritation provoked my own. “I am! I’ve spent thirty years with this phobia, Lucas, it’s not going to go away over night. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but I’m not going to be pushed into doing anything else that I don’t want to do!”
At that, my boyfriend exploded. “That you don’t want to do? So now you don’t want to be with me? You don’t want to live a normal life?”
“I’m happy with my life!” I yelled.
“YOU SHOULDN’T BE! I mean, look at you, Jane! You’re like, stunted. Before you met me, you weren’t progressing at all!”
The sting from his words took a second to hit me. But after a moment of appalled silence, I got up and left. There was nothing else to say.
…
It was about fifteen minutes later, whilst storming back to my house, that I realized I felt… off. My surroundings seemed blurry, the sky too bright, and I couldn’t seem to focus on any of it. My mind felt full of static, my body becoming unbearably heavy. I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to close my eyes.
And I was barely conscious when a black sedan drove up next to me, and familiar arms dragged my limp form into the trunk.