A quick note before we begin

I decided to skip over my last posting date as a moment of silence on this platform in respect for the social media takeover of the Black Lives Matter movement which was more deserving of our attention. Which is still more deserving. Just because the hashtags have stopped trending, just because the media has moved on, doesn’t mean that we should just forget about it all again. Black Lives Still Matter. The fight is nowhere near over, it’s barely begun. Keep up the momentum in whatever way you can—whether it’s through donating, signing petitions, protesting or advocating online or in the streets (safely! With masks!), educating yourself or helping others do the same. The movement continues. Click here for a compilation of resources that’s continuously being updated but dedicate the time to do your own research, too. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s not okay not to try.

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I walked to the dentist’s office this morning, tracing an old familiar route that was once the start of my hour long commute to a company that no longer exists. It feels like a lifetime ago. I watch the streetcars whiz by. It’s a little after 8am, what used to be the peak of rush hour. Now, a handful of faces stare back at me, most masked behind the tinted windows. I haven’t been on the streetcar in months. I’ve forgotten the reassuring rattle of the subway train pulling into the station.

Stepping into the dentist’s office today, my temperature checked and hand sanitiser sprayed liberally on my hands, I realised it was the first time in a long time that I had walked out into an enclosed space that was not my own without feeling the claws of anxiety tugging and constricting around my chest.

It didn’t come straight away, this feeling of alarm about the outside world. The first time I went to the grocery store after the stay at home orders came in, I wasn’t anxious to be there. I was apprehensive, admittedly, to what I would face there. Hoarders and empty shelves and a shocking sense of reality as to the situation we had found ourselves in—check, check, and check. But I certainly didn’t feel uncomfortable to simply be outside of my home.

As the weeks passed and my only physical contact with the outside world became these weekly trips and the occasional walk around my quiet neighbourhood, it got worse. Wednesdays became our designated grocery day and come Tuesday afternoon, the prickling sense of unease would set in for the next day’s task. I wrote a list. Then, I rewrote it in the order that the products would be found in the store, so I wouldn’t have to double back. A slight tendency to over-organise and plan is in my nature at the best of times but maybe this was a little much—even for me.

As we joined the end of a line that sometimes stretched out of the car park and around the block, I would fall silent as my roommate chatted at my side. The unpleasant tightness in my chest made my whole body tense. There were just so many people and being out there, among them, away from the safe sanctuary of my home, was sending every alarm system in my body into overdrive.

Wednesday afternoons, the ordeal over, I couldn’t do much of anything. The adrenalin crash that followed these trips usually sent me to my bed. I stopped even bothering writing up to-do lists for Wednesdays, knowing full-well they would remain untouched until I woke up fresh on Thursday. Thursdays, I liked: safe in the knowledge that I had a blissful six days until I had to return to the scene of the apocalypse.

I’ve gotten better about the grocery store. I know the system now. I follow the instructions and the signposts, I silently curse those who don’t, I wear my mask. I get in, I get out, and I’m home within the hour.

But as restrictions started to be lifted and semblances of the normal world returned, it stopped being about the grocery store—and became about everything else, instead.

I don’t know that I was really conscious of it until last week when I had to attend an appointment at the consulate to get my passport renewed. It was a task I was a little nervous for, anyway, for complicated citizenship concerns that I won’t get into. But what should have been a small concern blew up into an all-consuming worry train that I rode for the entire week leading up to my appointment. I couldn’t focus to anything with this ticking clock above my head. I knew it was irrational—yet there was nothing I could do calm the endless tirade of anxious propaganda that was flooding my conscious.

My appointment was over in ten minutes and I walked back out into the late morning sunshine feeling like a fool. My body had been wound up so tightly for so many days that I felt exhausted when I made it home and finally stopped to breathe.

I told myself that I wouldn’t do that all over again with the dentist. And I managed, mostly. Yesterday, I made it all the way to the main intersection before I noted that I was breathing a little more erratically than usual. I stopped by the side of the road and forced myself to calm down. For my sanity. And also because having an anxiety attack in a mask, as I have discovered, is a bit of a claustrophobic experience.

Today, my follow-up appointment, I was just going to the dentist. I didn’t need to think about it. I rolled out of bed at 7:30am, enjoyed my breezy walk down the road and greeted the staff with the ease of someone who talks to human beings outside of my bubble regularly.

Huh. I can do it.

For a lot of people, the pressure of being stuck inside for this extended period of time with limited or no contact has been immense. I know my roommate has felt that side of this far more than I have. For me, the quiet, isolated aspect has not always been the challenge.

For an introvert with moderate levels of anxiety including social anxiety? The challenge now is to go back out into the world. It’s not the virus I fear, really. It’s the outside. It’s the people.

There’s an awful lot of people out there, my brain likes to remind me whenever I step outside the confines of my cosy cave. People, Suzey! Remember people?

I’ve always enjoyed my own space. It’s why I’ve always put the time into decorating and personalising the spaces I live in, no matter how short a stay I might have there. These are the spaces where I refuel my energy levels, alone, away from the bustle and the crowded voices clamouring for attention.

But the world out there is important, too. I can’t live in a box by myself for my entire life. Humans aren’t built like that. Introvert or not, we are social beings. I have seen a few more friends recently and I’ve enjoyed it. With them by my side, the world out there seems a little less daunting.

It leaves me thinking, though. Now that we’ve all learned how to stay at home, how do we learn to go back out into this new world?

Out There