People Are Weird And The Internet Is Vast
Have you noticed that the world is definitely different post-COVID? I mean, of course, how could it not be in some ways, but the changes I’m seeing everywhere mostly revolve around real, flesh and blood humans no longer being able to communicate, be seen, or be social IRL with other humans.
Meanwhile, during the lockdowns the internet exploded and suddenly eeeeeeeveryone is trying to be an influencer, a lot of them in really gross ways.
As a naturally weird, casual, former agoraphobic observer of “normal people”, what I’m seeing is not normal, or good, and we need to fix it somehow. I don’t know how, and I’m tired of people always looking to me for the answers to my own questions and dilemmas, but collectively, we need to fix it, because I don’t think any of us are having a particularly good time right now.
Harold and I host a weekly coffee meetup for our local FetLife community. This coffee event has been running since 2008, under various people, but Harold’s been running it since 2020, and we’ve both noticed some things about the folks who do and don’t attend over the past 3 years.
The number of people who are new to the community who reach out to Harold, the official host of the event, and say that they’re nervous about coming, is probably 6/10. The other 4 would just show up to coffee and find their way with the group, but the majority of new folks reach out to Harold before the event and require some degree of hand-holding. I am never privy to these conversations, I just hear about them after the fact.
Almost the first thing any new people say when they sit down at our table and introduce themselves, is that A) they had epiphanies about life and themselves during lockdown, and B) they’re having trouble leaving the house and being social after being traumatized by COVID and the lockdowns themselves.
I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already seen yourself within your own families and communities, but maybe you’ve never looked at it from the perspective of someone who literally never left the house other than for medical appointments for 20 years. Or from someone whose entire world and only friends that whole time were on the internet. So here goes…
The World Outside Is Not As Scary As You Think It Is, I Promise
When I was afraid to leave the house for 20 years, I was afraid of the world outside and the people within it. I carefully curated my home and the people who were allowed in, from all angles, from celebrities in the media, to politicians, to people on the internet, and to friends & family. I didn’t want to be influenced by any of these people because I was convinced they were all bad in some way or that the interactions I would have with them would go wrong in some way. The risk of an awkward social encounter or two – or worse, a confrontation – was not worth any reward because due to my anxiety disorder, those awkward encounters get amplified and replayed over and over in my head to the point of true mental disturbance.
The thing is though, that when you live in a nice, warm, pink, carefully curated, comfortable bubble, it’s easy to get a warped perspective of the world outside that bubble – that’s the nature of bubbles, they’re round. I learned that sometimes ya gotta stick your head up outside that bubble and try to reconnect with the world again, which I did all the time as an agoraphobic person. But the only flesh and blood people I interacted with were people I gave money to (waitstaff/cashiers) or my immediate family because those people are like, socially obligated to at least pretend to be nice to, or love, you.
But where we are now in society, post-COVID, I think sticking your head up every now and then is not enough to battle whatever COVID did to us.
In 2025 we need to actually break our bubbles.
The bubble – and who was in it – was so important during COVID due to the necessity of social distancing to keep the virus contained until a vaccine was developed. That is an actual fact that happened in the history of the world. But we’ve long had a vaccine by now, and unless you’re seriously immunocompromised somehow, the only reason not to pop that bubble and rejoin Planet Earth 2.0 is psychological, besties. And I think we’re all better than that.
I have an acquaintance named Morgan. They usually use forearm crutches to get around, but I’ve seen them need to use a wheelchair just as often. They and their partner make a living by selling the things they make, the books they write, and their online courses and seminars, at vendor’s markets all around Ontario. Morgan is immunocompromised. I won’t say “extremely” since I’ve never seen them on oxygen or in the hospital or anything (it’s possible they have and I just don’t know, just not probable). They are still very mindful of social distancing, have all the vaccines up until current, still wear heavy duty N-95 masks in public always, and don’t go to many social events because they don’t meet their risk profile. If they got sick at a social event, it would prevent them from doing the thing they love to do, which is educating and vending at shows.
Even Morgan, who is the smartest, most immunocompromised person I can think of in my world right now, will vend at a show with 15,000 attendees! They just wear a mask and stay up to date on their vaccinations!
So if Morgan – who would be seriously affected by COVID physically and financially, even in a country with socialized medicine – thinks the risk, with all their precautions is worth it to interact with other humans? You probably can too, if COVID risk is why you’re avoiding the world and you’re not even immunocompromised or taking care of someone who is. (And you were prone to interacting with other humans pre-COVID. I’m not gonna give you the magic cure for rootbound – as opposed to situational – agoraphobia in this post. Sorry.)
You might now be asking yourself, why should I try to rejoin the world and be social again? What’s out there anyway? Especially my fellow ADHD homies. Humans, especially those of us with ADHD, are very much “out of sight, out of mind”. That’s why they now suggest using clear plastic bins for everything when you’re reorganizing. Without going out there and experiencing the world, COVID has proven we’re quick to forget what’s out there and the things and people we used to enjoy. Within the 2 year span of “the COVID times” from lockdowns to everyone being vaccinated, we just all adopted this mass neurosis to some degree. And worse, some folks are still just accepting it as they way it is now!
Grey sweatpants and no bra during a Wednesday afternoon work meeting? Hell yes! Still grey sweatpants and no bra while you eat dinner in front of the TV? Or how about still wearing them to bed (where you fall asleep still watching TV)? Because it’s not like you got your dinner on them or anything. And still wearing them the next day? Well now they’re worn in!
Yeah, that’s too easy and that’s the trap I lived in for 20 years. Don’t fall for it!
And while we’re bursting bubbles, the so-called “golden era” of TV that we had when the streaming services first started producing their own content? It’s over, bbs. Don’t you see it’s all the same now?
Now we’ve reached peak saturation of peak stupidity all to keep your attention so they can sell you more stuff – and it’s working like a charm! Probably better than ever due to algorithms’ abilities to track your habits and predict what you might want to buy so skilfully! Is this really worth staying in for? Do you realize they’re actually less invasive and have less control over you outside your home? That inside your home, you’re a captive, docile audience for advertisers, or people with agendas, who want to manipulate you into doing something using online media, social or otherwise? It’s not in their best interest for you to leave your home, so they do their best to keep you there. You’re playing right into their hands!
I’m not saying this to scare anyone, in fact I really hope I’m not because today? The sky is not falling. Probably not tomorrow either. And if it does? All the more reason to spend time with and have good, face-to-face relationships with friends (new or old) and family (born or chosen).
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my post-COVID divorce life, is that people are a necessary evil, but very few of them are necessarily evil.
I meet a lot of people, which is crazy to think considering I spent 2 decades being afraid of them, and in the 3 years I’ve been leaving the house, I’ve had 1 or 2 personal instances where people have genuinely sucked.
Maybe it’s because I live in Canada, but usually people either don’t care about you or what you’re doing because they’re so busy focusing on themselves and their own worlds, or they want to be kind and please you. We are a nation of pleasers, for sure. It’s only been in the moments where people have lost control of themselves and their emotions – whether they had anything to do with me or not. Neither person was evil. It’s just that neither person could control their worst impulses, which I get! God, do I get that! It’s fucking HARD sometimes! And the world tests you constantly!
So that’s why ya gotta do Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to contain those “hot thoughts” and Immersion Therapy to treat the agoraphobia. What no one tells you about agoraphobia though, is that once you have it, I think you always have it. I think something in your/our brains just clicks on or off, and it takes an immense amount of time outside the home to temporarily slide the switch back to what the rest of the world claims is “normal” levels of social interaction outside the home. Once your social battery runs low and you need to be in your home for some downtime, that switch becomes like a ticking timer, inching closer and closer to agoraphobia territory the more you get into your comfy clothes, and your streaming services, and your pets, and your Instacart. (Oh yes, I know that one too!)
That’s why I think Immersion Therapy is a therapy that never ends, meanwhile CBT is a set of learned skills that are applied situationally once outside the home.
So what is Immersion Therapy like in the beginning? Mostly stressful & uncomfortable, but it gets better over time, which is why you need to create a reward system for yourself around the therapy.
Because I’m an artist, I started with “artist dates”, an idea suggested by the classic self-help book for creatives called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.
I was so agoraphobic that I didn’t even want to be seen, and I’ve always been afraid of driving, so my husband would drive me to the Michael’s store in the south end of Barrie, the closest city to us. He would come in with me and I would have to stay there, among all the snobby, comfortable, white women paying too much for shit they could make at home, who I felt immensely inferior to, in my grey, paint-stained sweatpants, baggy paint-stained t-shirt, and oversized hoodie with the logo for the r/trees subreddit emblazoned on the back (iykyk), until I found one thing or several things, to buy for an art project, under $20. Because I only had $20 to spend – regardless of whether we could afford less or more, that limit was set – and I only got to go on an artist date every 2 weeks, I would walk around almost every square inch of that giant store trying to find the perfect thing, uncomfortable af, while also trying to avoid other shoppers, which is impossible at a Michael’s on a weekend, and that was exactly the point!
Growing is almost never comfortable.
Being in the Michael’s store was incredibly difficult and uncomfortable for me, more than once I had full blown panic attacks and couldn’t leave the car to actually go IN to the store, or I would have one when I was looking at something, but someone else was clearly waiting for me to finish and get out of the way. Plus, I only had $20 to spend, and they probably had unlimited funds (in my mind), so their project and purchase must be better or more important than my little mixed media glitter girl painting. I mean, every woman in Michael’s is obviously Martha Stewart but me. I’m more like Martha Stupid, or so the negative self-talk would go, which took a lot of coaching from my husband to get over, until finally “artist dates” simply became “trips to Michael’s”.
The problem with artist dates and trips to Michael’s is that I was still hoarding my spoils and not leaving the house any other time in the two weeks between dates. It also didn’t help that I was with someone who already said I had “too many appointments” between psychiatric and medical care at the time, and preferred to stay at home watching “the golden era of television” unfold on Netflix.
That’s when I decided that, since all I did was work from home and make art at home, I needed to figure out a way to do one or both of those things outside in the actual world. That’s when I discovered Green Sprouts Coffee & Cannabis Vapour Lounge, a short-lived but sweet little place just off the Five Points in Barrie, tucked away among the back doors of other businesses.
It was run by Chris & Gillian, a married couple who were inspired to open up shop after a trip to Amsterdam where cannabis & coffee lounges are just a given, and you could get any kind of fancy cafe type coffee drink there, handcrafted by one of them. You could also get a pretty fucking delicious, gluten-free brownie there, that I would still actually eat because they didn’t taste gluten-free. 🤯
Oh, and you could also vape weed there using one of their medical grade Volcano tabletop vaporizers or you could bring your own cannabis vaping device (or rig) and vape to your heart’s content with a daily $5 membership.
When I discovered Green Sprouts, I realized I needed to make my art practice mobile and make myself go there as often as possible, driving myself, by myself, for immersion therapy, but also in the hopes of finding friends.
At the time, I was primarily drawing colouring pages for Patreon with a pencil and ink on paper, scanning them, editing them in Photoshop, printing out the finished page, then making colourized versions I coloured with a giant set of professional grade pencil crayons that sat, organized by colour like a rainbow, in glasses I got from the dollar store on my desk where I worked.
To make that portable, I put the glasses filled with pencil crayons, inside a clear, frosted, plastic box with a handle and a lid, that had a snap enclosure. The glasses fit perfectly, with only enough room to slide in a few pencils and an eraser, as if it were made for that specific purpose.
I took my backpack full of paper, rulers, my pencil case full of Microns, and the pencil crayons to the car, buckled my seatbelt, backed out of my driveway onto the highway I live on, and pointed the car toward Barrie, by myself. I safely arrived every single time, remembered to lock the car when I got out, and drew my girls at Green Sprouts pretty much every day they were open and I could afford to.
My husband set a budget for me at the beginning of the week, which I broke up by day, and we made it so that I could pay the membership fee, and have 3 diet cokes and a brownie if I wanted one, on each visit. I would check in with said husband, who also worked from home, just before dinner time, and he would either ask me to come home, come down to Green Sprouts himself and hang out with me there, or he would say he and the kids were fine, and that I should take a break from art and get dinner at one of the restaurants on Dunlop Street. He was very supportive of what started as Immersion Therapy, and over a few months became a glimmer of a life of my own with friends and a tiny bit of community.
Then weed became legal here, and with it came a whole new set of anti-smoking laws which prevented any vapour lounges from continuing to operate. *sad trombone*
The Green Sprouts era only lasted from September until March or April, and I don’t drive outside of Elmvale in the winter unless I absolutely have to ’til this day, so I only went there when there was no snow on the ground, only a few months. With nowhere to be again, staying home became easier, and there I stayed until my husband asked for a divorce, and I met someone who wants to live as big of a life as I do.
This is why I’m pretty sure, at least for me, Immersion Therapy has to be an ongoing, lifelong practice. I can’t backslide. And neither can you, if you find yourself in a similar situation.
I wish I could end this post eloquently, but I have to go clean the house for Christmas. If this post resonated with you in any way and you want me to post more like it, find some way to let me know.
