I’ve been mostly home for over a year now. I can rarely go anywhere if at all. I use to be a very different person than I am today. I went out with friends, I was involved in lots of activities and I could attend class without a problem!
sigh I’m 24 years old and I can’t seem to function like a normal human being. The thought of leaving the house just freaks me out. It seems like it started very slowly, about two years ago or so. I’d get nervous about being in certain places or feeling like I had no control over some situations. Little by little I stopped doing the things that I enjoyed. My world began to get smaller and smaller until I could no longer go out at all. There was a time when I couldn’t even receive phone calls. I didn’t want any contact with the world outside.
The time when I got really bad, when everything worsen was when one of my youngest brothers was killed in Iraq last year. This just shattered me in to pieces. I tried to get better thinking and wanting to make him proud of me, so I signed up for classes in college again. Needless to say I couldn’t attend. I’d drive to college and go in class, but I couldn’t manage to stay longer than fifteen minutes, sometimes thirty or the whole class time if I really concentrated and refused to let in to the thought of going home. But it became harder and harder. I’d drive to class only to drive back home. I flunked that semester.
I began to take a strong interest in photography last year. My parents(being the supportive parents they’ve always been) bought me a new professional camera. I’ve also bought some studio equipment(online) and things like that. But here I am, reduced to taking pictures of things in my garden. I’d like to be a professional photographer one day, but I don’t know whether that day will ever come.
I really want to overcome this, and I know it’s not going to be easy at all. But it gives me a bit of encouragement knowing that I’m not alone and that others are trying to get rid of it too.
