On Keeping One’s Own Company

Let’s talk about agoraphobia and the pandemic.

Sometimes, stepping outside is hard. Photo by E. Black.

I haven’t spoken much about this in the past, mostly because I haven’t wanted it to define me, but the older I get, the harder it gets to tell the difference between something that’s “wrong” with me and something that’s just different from most people. Which is to say, I am learning to accept myself more, I guess, even the parts that are difficult to deal with. The people closest to me know all about these issues already, because I’m not ashamed of them, and you also can’t be close to me for too long without noticing them, but I haven’t made them public knowledge just because I guess I didn’t really feel the need to. But it’s such an enormous part of my daily life, my whole way of being, that the more I think about it, the more it feels strange that I’ve never really opened up about it.

Unfortunately, I think a lot more people are dealing with issues similar to what I’ve dealt with my whole life, post pandemic, after living in lockdown for so long, and that’s another reason why I decided to talk about this now. I have a decent slice-of-life sampling situation, being the owner of a shop, where I have exposure to and chat with people from a lot of backgrounds and walks of life, not just within my own usual social circles, and what I’m hearing from people are a lot more social anxiety and…