I’m gonna do some transformin’

And you won’t recognize me

And we’ll be sailin’ along

It’s been 8 months since I got a proper haircut.

It’s been 8 months since I’ve gone to Whole Foods(do not judge me)

That changed today.

Today I woke up and decided to change my life, and while that might sound a bit dramatic, it’ll make sense in time.

In the last two years I’ve suffered some unimaginable losses. Like my life was a snow globe and that little snot nose kid from Toy Story picked it up and shook the shit out of it. We all know the kid I’m talking about? The one that would light his toys on fire and shit. Little asshole.

Anyways for the last 8 months it’s like time has been standing still. I hadn’t really left the house other than for short walks, short drives, on a good day I’d make it to the shitty Cumberland farms by my house. You all know I gave up social media, today being day 5 without it. Today was the first time I missed it, and not actually because I wanted to be on it, but there were some people I connected with on there about this mental health journey, people that told me I gave them hope, and today is one for celebrating in my opinion.

For a lot of the last 8 months I thought I was trying to get better, and I truly believed it, but now that I see what better can feel like, what effort towards better looks like, I know I wasn’t trying.

Now that I’ve gotten a taste of normal life again I won’t stop trying, I’ll keep coming back like a shark in the water. It’s crazy how much you miss the little things, most people fucking hate the grocery store, I walked through Whole Foods today like a kid at Disneyland. Thankful to be there, to be out, around people, and not panicking.

I had therapy this morning and towards the end of the session my therapist and I always discuss the goals for the week. This week the goal was to:

Get a haircut

Have a panic attack in public

Go to Whole Foods

I crushed those goals in 2 hours, and only one of those goals is probably putting a big question mark in your head.

You had a panic attack in public? like on purpose? that was your goal?

It was.

During the session I had mentioned to my therapist how I really wanted to go to get a haircut but the barber shop down the street was a foreign place to me(and kinda felt foreign to this country honestly) and how I was uncomfortable because I’ve had panic attacks while getting my hair cut before. He asked if I could go to the place I used to go before I stopped leaving the house, I said it wasn’t an option right now. He asked why?

I didn’t have an answer. There is no reason it’s not an option. It’s not an option because I’ve set this stupid boundary in my head, that if I drove all the way to somerville I’d be more likely to have a panic attack than if I drove a mile down the road to this new place.

It’s been bugging me all day, this perimeter I’ve set on where I can and can’t go isn’t real, I let the anxiety trick me into thinking there’s places I can’t go. So my therapist said go have a panic attack in public, when it passes it’ll begin to change that narrative in your brain that you’re only safe in certain places.

So I go to this barbershop down the road, a little more than halfway there I get really uncomfortable, I say I’m already more than half way let’s just get to the parking lot, if this still feels bad we can go home. I got to the parking lot and said, you’ve come all the way through that uncomfortable feeling to get here and you’re not going to at least go inside. I go inside and one of the guys tells me it’ll be 20 to 30 minutes til I can get a cut. Immediately I panic, I planned this whole thing. I’d get here in 4 minutes, get my haircut for 30 at most, and drive 4 minutes home. I have 38 minutes before I lose control. I sat down and about 3 minutes after sitting down the panic hits, and it hits kinda hard. I go to stand up, fuck it I’ll come back. Then all the uncomfortable feelings I’ve already gone through would be for nothing. I saw a lecture about agoraphobia last week from the ADAA and the woman speaking said a panic attack peaks between 90 seconds and 3 minutes, by 3 minutes you are at the most uncomfortable you can feel. Something to do with nerves and chemicals in your body I have no idea. I pull up the stop watch on my Apple Watch and hit start. 3 minutes and we can relax. The watch hit 3 minutes and I said okay, I’ve felt the worst I’m going to feel, so I can handle this level of discomfort. I was in that barber shop for an hour and a half. I left feeling perfectly fine, went to Whole Foods, and drove home. All feeling fine.

My therapist said in our session today sometimes the best way to make the discomfort go away is to make it worse. The panic hit and I wanted to run, instead I sat through it and for a moment felt worse, but within 3 minutes I felt better.

Getting that haircut was an accomplishment that’s going to seem so small and stupid to all of you, but it changed everything for me.

I went into that barbershop not recognizing myself. I left the person I was before the agoraphobia started 8 months ago. I feel better about the way that I look, I feel better about how I handled it. I can’t wait for the next hurdle. I’m going back to work soon I can feel it. I’ll get to see my coworkers, I’ll get to see our regulars. I’ll get to do what I was made to do, and it all started with a 3 minute panic attack in the barber shop.

Soon, I’ll be sailin’ along…

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.