TFW you realize you have to leave the vault

I haven’t left my neighborhood in almost four years.

The last time I left the neighborhood it wasn’t for very long, just a quick car trip with a friend to Burger King. Not really a memorable occasion, except for it was the last time I went anywhere.

I’ve been suffering from agoraphobia and anxiety off and on for several years, and things just kind of got out of hand. For years I was able to maintain myself, forced myself to go to the grocery store a few times a month, worked from home. Sometimes I even went out for lunch with a friend.

But it got to a point where I just couldn’t maintain anymore. I tried to get help, but the therapists covered by my plan wouldn’t do teletherapy or home visits. One said she didn’t feel safe going to someone’s home and I understood that, the other said if I really wanted to get better I would come across town and get therapy. I understood that, too.

But it only got worse. There was no help for me, outside of a $120/hr Skype therapist I found that I couldn’t afford. Between paying for insurance I couldn’t even use and trying to explain to my therapist that this was all just too expensive. She told me if I was committed to recovery, I would find a way to afford my therapy.

To be fair, I was a lot more committed to not being homeless than I was to my recovery. I could exist in familiar misery for a long time, not so long in a cardboard box.

So I quit doing therapy. I just worked and worked so I could survive. Some days I would work 18 hours straight, and to be fair the wages weren’t that great, but I was able to have a little bit of money.

And the money I got? I ate.

Food was the only enjoyment I had left to me in the world. My weight ballooned up to 400lbs, all I did was work, eat, and hyperventilate if I tried to step off the front porch to check the mail.

It was bad. Very bad.

Three years ago I decided I’d had enough and I started losing weight. As of today I’ve lost 198lbs, it was a long road but a worthwhile one. I haven’t been under 200lbs since I was ten years old.

But I can’t enjoy the victory because I’m still trapped inside. I still see myself as the mess of a person who ran away from that woman in the supermarket that walked up to me and asked “How do you even get that fat?”

That was the excuse I used to quit going to the store, by the way. Some idiot insulting me. I’m honestly sure that if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. I’m also pretty sure that I probably would have continued at a snail’s pace

But now we’ve hit a snag!

I have to move. And not just move down the street — I have to move over 2100 miles away. In two months. I’ve searched for every way possible to delay moving, but there is none.

Over the last year I’ve been making myself go outside more regularly, but I don’t have a car and I don’t know anyone with one. So it’s basically just as far as my legs’ll take me before I panic and run back the other way.

Which is, admittedly, not very far.

So starting next week, a friend of mine is going to come to here every day and drag me outside. We’re going to get as far as we can each day, every day, and I’m going to have to somehow do in two months what I couldn’t do in four years.

I’m going to not only have to go outside, I’m going to have to do a three day drive across the agoraphobic hellscape that is the American West. But if I can lose half my bodyweight, leaving the vault is going to be a snap, right?

I’m starting this to keep myself accountable and to share my journey. Hopefully there are some laughs ahead, and maybe I’ll be able to help someone else take those first steps out the door.