I have something to confess.
I know it’s stupid, but I’ve always hated having my curtains open.
If I opened them, it meant, at some point, I would have to close them.
Not during the day; I mean, come on, I’m not a baby or anything! … It was just having to close them at night. When it was pitch black and dark. Reflective glass gives nothing away as to what could be lurking behind the window’s mirrored surface. Who’s watching? What’s out there? You can’t see out, but everything out there can see in!
I know it’s silly and immature. It’s just… I couldn’t control my runaway anxiety. I would think these horrible loud thoughts inside my head. ‘Everyone is wrong! There’s something out there!’
In all honestly, I always expected to be halfway through pulling the heavy draped material closed when out of the darkness, a giant fanged drooling werewolf would jump out, snarling up at my window, teeth scraping on the glass, baying for my blood, eyes outsized with a glare full of loathing.
My heart races just thinking about it.
And yes, I’m an adult.
And no, I don’t know how closing curtains would protect me against anything other than an attack by the giant Karri moths, which get drawn to any light source.
But every night… every goddamn night, the hairs on my neck would stand up with the whole goose bumps, handshaking and heart beating faster regime. I couldn’t get past my anxiety. I couldn’t believe there was nothing out there. I couldn’t stop being paranoid.
Okay, I lived by myself. That didn’t help. And I admit to being an introvert who loved living on a quiet bush block in the middle of nowhere. Yes, I know, that probably didn’t help either. And I was ‘required’ to go to a therapist.
Trust me; he really didn’t help!
This experienced and highly qualified ‘expert’ said things like; you need to learn to control your stress. Stress makes you go into self-protection mode. It shuts you off. It makes you too cautious and fearful. Too hard to reach. Look at what your last episode did to your life. Do you really want that to happen again?”
He was such a twat!
But sadly, I had no choice. He was the only therapist within a reasonable driving distance. I kept thinking I should make the three-hour drive to Perth, but I couldn’t stand the traffic and the people. It was just too much noise. Too many… people. I wish, in hindsight, that I’d just pushed myself… sigh.
But unfortunately, I continued to go once a week and was forced to listen to him sit there and plan and then inflict my aversion therapy.
There he sat in his leather grey chair, smiling like a patronising idiot looking over his black half-rimmed glasses, grey hair slicked down in a side part to cover his balding dome. The first step, he explained, was for me to… leave one curtain open at night and then build up from there.
By the next appointment, he wanted me to have all the curtains open in the house, even in my bedroom! That’s right! Leave my curtains open. Undress with my curtains open. Go to sleep with my curtains open. You get my drift. Creepy!
During the next session, he wasn’t pleased when I informed him that all the curtains were open.
‘All?’ he questioned with his intonation bordering on condescending.
I had to admit, not all. Just the bedroom one was closed.
Honestly, all I wanted to do was stand up and slap him in the face when he corrected me with a ‘Tut tut.
“How do you expect to overcome your childish fears, your prior episode, if you don’t confront your fantasies, your unfounded fears like an adult?”
