When you put it like that—one place—outside feels more manageable. Or, really, my desire to avoid it feels more acceptable.
I am an agoraphobe.
I am ashamed of my agoraphobia, so ashamed that I try never to name it. How cruel that is, though, to avoid naming the wounded animal living in my heart, to treat it like a stray I’d kick in the ribs.
Because I try not to name my agoraphobia, I rarely write about it and have only just started talking about it to others recently. Writing these words now, my cheeks feel the hot flush of embarrassment. I worry what you all will think of me; what kind of poet is afraid to go outside? It’s just one place, after all. And so much of my poetry centers around nature.
But it’s true. I’m scared to go outside.
I can pinpoint the exact moment my agoraphobia began to develop. The decision had just been made in the Title IX case investigating my rapist—he was found not responsible—and I decided to celebrate the end of the longest year and a half of my life by having friends come over to my dorm to drink. We were underage, but I had an older friend who was willing to buy me booze. It was just four of us: me, my roommate N, my best friend R, and his friend T. A quiet night in to finally, finally catch my breath.
Oh, if only.
I had a crush on T, and as I got progressively drunker, my flirtation became increasingly obvious. He just wanted the free alcohol—fair enough—and left after a couple hours to meet up with his girlfriend. At that point, I was sloppy drunk, throwing up in the tiny under-the-desk trash can we had. N graciously held back my hair and held off R, who kept trying to rub my back even when I told him I didn’t want to be touched.
Do you see where this is headed?
That night, R assaulted me on my dorm room floor, N asleep in her bed above us. As it happened, I just wanted to curl in on myself. I had the chance when he went to use the bathroom; I managed to get myself in bed and let myself pillbug into a sense of security.
A week later, we were all sent home for the COVID-19 pandemic.
I stayed with my grandparents because I was too ashamed to face my parents; I didn’t want them to learn that I had once again been assaulted. I reported R to Title IX but declined to go through a formal investigation. The first case had been so traumatizing that I knew I couldn’t survive going through that again—I had barely survived the first time.
Staying with elderly immunocompromised people meant I didn’t have to go outside, not beyond the backyard. For months, I stayed inside. When we eventually returned to campus, I only left my dorm for classes, paranoid that I would run into R or my rapist. People thought I was just prioritizing public health over a desire to go outside—the perfect excuse.
Even now, hundreds of miles away from R, I am scared to go outside.
How could I not be? We live in a time of mass violence. As a visibly queer person, I feel the risk just over my shoulder, just around the corner.
Recently, I talked to R on the phone. He didn’t apologize for what he did; instead, he spent the time insisting he has become a much better person, he was so fucked up back then, he would never do that now, he still doesn’t even remember what happened. He asked how I’m doing, and I told him the truth: I’m terrified to go outside. R was surprised; he asked why. “Because people have hurt me,” I told him, “and I don’t want to be hurt anymore.”
That’s true. But I realized that I’m also missing out on so much beauty and joy and pleasure by hiding in my apartment. Part of why I’m writing about my agoraphobia, in fact, is because I want to be held accountable to it. I want you all to know that I’m scared, but I’m trying anyway.
After all, if I don’t go outside, I miss views like this. I treasure the day I took this photo, the memory of the long walk Z and I took. I’m trying to wrestle with my agoraphobia for Z, and for days like these.
I’m also trying for myself. For the pleasure of wind turning my ears red, of leaves crunching underfoot, of the sun kissing my cheeks.