It was chaos.
Once upon a time, I had thrived on it.
Now, nothing scared me more.
So my house was almost OCD tidy. Everything had a place and was in it. My dishes were cleaned as soon as I finished a meal. Everything worked together style-wise. My clothes were in the closet or hamper or washer/dryer combo I had installed in my coat closet after begging and pleading (via email) the super allow me to do so.
I reached into the cabinet and grabbed a can of Rocky's food, putting it into the bowl and rinsing out the tin and putting it in my recycling before moving off toward the hall that led to my bedroom.
The walls were a slightly lighter shade of sage and my bedding was all white. The nightstands on either side of the bed and the lamps on them were white as well.
Order.
Always.
I went into my closet and grabbed a robe then made my way into the bathroom that was all white when I moved in. The only difference from then to now was the fact that I had a very big, very modern, very fancy soaking tub installed. I had saved up for it for six months before I indulged.
It wasn't a waste either.
So many people never used their tubs.
Being the nervous nelly I was perpetually, I tended to take relaxing baths pretty much daily. Sometimes twice a day.
I reached to stop the drain and put the water on hot, dropping two bath bombs in and sinking in when it was mostly-full.
I lay back, taking a deep breath, putting a hand on my belly to make sure it inflated and deflated with each breath; my therapist was always telling me the reason I was so anxious all the time was because I wasn't breathing properly and that the hand on belly technique would ensure that I breathed deeply.
It helped.
But it wasn't a magic cure.
Nothing was.
Not even the medication she kept prescribing that I stopped taking or filling months before.
They didn't help and they made me tired all the time.
Anxiety and agoraphobia were bad enough. Sleeping all the time had started making me depressed. And, well, that was the absolute last thing I needed on top of everything else.
But belly breathing, yeah, it didn't fix anything. My throat didn't feel like it was in a vice grip, but my heart still felt like it was pounding and my chest was too heavy and my mind raced from here to there and everywhere in between.
It started, as it often did, with Bry and Carl and their weekly visits. I spent the other six days of the week preparing for them. I had known Bry for a long time; in fact, had gone to school with him and he had been my only constant friend throughout my childhood and adolescence and adulthood. He had changed a bit over the years. He got more gruff; he was a little harder. But he was still the boy who used to draw monsters with me on lunch break or come up for the perfect Christmas lists for Santa over winter vacation.
But Bry had become a man who did things less than legally.
Bry was also the only reason I was able to stay in my apartment and take care of myself reasonably well. If not for him, I didn't know. I would have probably been a pathetic shut-in still, but likely in my uncle's basement, feeling like a complete burden and hating myself more each day because of it.
If there was anything worse than not being able to live my own life, it was dragging anyone else into my small little world with me.
And Uncle Danny, yeah, he would happily do that for me.
But I couldn't let that happen.
He did enough for me.
Hell, he raised me for a large chunk of my life.
I owed him more than burden and worry.
As such, there was maybe some lying done to him. He knew I couldn't leave my apartment and he knew I provided for myself. What he didn't know was that Bry was in on the plan. He thought I made money from my writing.
I did.
But not nearly enough to keep me afloat. Not even if I downsized to a crummier apartment.
Sometimes you needed to lie to the people you loved to protect them.
Or, at least, that was what I was choosing to believe.
I'd like to say that I made progress in therapy that I did via video call three times a week. But that would be a lie. Because anyone who was anyone knew that there was no cure for anxiety and agoraphobia. There were peaks and valleys. There were good and bad times, but it was always a part of you. And there was only so much my therapist could do when the meds didn't help and I couldn't force myself to do the only other thing to overcome my issues- exposure therapy.