Back in my early 20s – somewhere between quitting another higher education course and getting my job at the Co-Op I stopped leaving the house.
It started off small. I didn’t have a whole lot of places to be unemployed as I was and I didn’t have many (read any) friends in the same city as me (they were all online scattered all over the world). I went to the shops along the Narborough Rd where I lived and that’s about it. I went to the GP. I paid my gas bill in person at the post office.
But then, the anxiety I felt in going to the post office started to become panic and panic became all encompassing and I stopped going to the post office.
And I stopped paying the phone bill.
Then I stopped going to the Co-Op. Then the newsagents that was closer. Then Iceland which was across the road. I hadn’t needed to go to the GP for anything except my prescriptions which was ordered for me, but I stopped picking them up from the pharmacy as well and then I stopped taking my meds.
Then I stopped leaving the house. I went into the back garden – a weird little yard infested with Japanese knotweed that grew taller than me (granted, I’m not overly tall at 5’6 but still, it was taller than my door). But not often because we put a fridge in front of the back door (for reasons I can’t remember – possibly the only space we had).
I didn’t go out the front door. I didn’t even go into the front room if I had too – it was full of junk, boxes of stuff and mail I hadn’t opened in months and months. I buried my head in the sand and got more and more isolated and depressed and anxious.
Then the debt collectors turned up. All because the post office made me anxious.
There were four of them, and when I looked out the window I could see a smartly dressed woman with a clip board and three men – one of which was holding a bright red battering ram. They had the authority to break down my door and fit a pay as you go gas meter.
I just let them in – no violence required. The battled through the junk in the front room, fitted the meter, set the tariff and the debt and were on their way in less than an hour.
It seemed to heavy handed and still does in many ways. There were no checks to make sure I was even alive, no checks to make sure I wasn’t a vulnerable person (which, given the state of my mental health – I definitely was), just three blokes and a gas meter and a court order.
I could’ve been rotting away in the living room or any number of things – as it was I was just ignoring the world and had succumb to my mental health.
I’d like to say things improved after that – that I immediately went outside and started opening my post and all was right with my world.
It’s not quite what happened, but I did start going out again. I did get back on medication, went back to the GP, went to the psychiatrist, I even got a job that let me have Friday’s off for therapy. But I also suffered psychosis for six months and ended up trying to kill myself every six months or so. I still struggle with opening my post and burying my head in the sand.
It was a long road out again, and mostly because of a battering ram.
