It’s 4am in the RV, Kasey is fast asleep next to me. I have sweat around the ring of my neck and my shirt is somewhat damp and chilly from the evaporation around my armpits, arms. My chest, lungs have a tighter feel to them with dull pain in between my ribs. My nose could do with a good blowing.
I’ve checked the temperature and humidity. It’s a bit warm at 73F, I had set the heat pump’s thermostat to 88F as a test.
Humidity also seems to be a bit higher, it’s 41F outside and humidity is at 91%, 44% inside.
Wow, yeah; the RV front temp got up to 74F. Not bad at all for just the heat pump. The temperature of the air coming out of the heat pump stayed at around a solid 122F with a humidity of 11%. No longer having this air just dumped on us while sleeping is very nice.
We had “poly” thanksgiving last night, had some dinner and played some games. First time meeting Lianna’s partners, husband. It was also the first time I put the leaf in the table. Fun fact about the table, I specifically bought it when putting my house back together after Amanda and I stopped living together, 6 person table, 6 person couch, for polyamory. There were six of us in attendance.
I struggled just a little bit with being the only one there with a penis as I felt as if I was the odd one out in a way. Previously having your feminism and queerness questioned and compared, being invalidated and your “toxic masculinity” jealousy not only used against you, but to serve as someone else’s gender validation (Amanda forced us poly to be with her trans ex-roomate) was quite traumatizing and I’m still recovering from it in some ways.
Things were good, though! One thing is for certain that Lianna is pretty giggly around me, it’s cute. Both Kasey and I agreed that if we had continued to live here longer that we’d likely go deeper with Lianna in time. We have dinner scheduled for Friday, what is supposed to be the day before we leave.
Being in the RV is an adjustment, we cheated and stayed in the house last week when we should of been getting used to the space. The bed isn’t as comfortable as inside for sure, even with a new topper is a bit meh. We end up sinking towards each other a bit and this is the same mattress that was part of the Zinus lawsuit for fiberglass.
We shall try to put the full queen in today and see what we can do to try and make it fit (this RV uses a short Queen). It’s a hybrid wrapped coil spring mattress, so trying to cut it down, make it shorter would be.. interesting. I have some ideas.
About an hour later and it feels cooler in here, dropped by 2F in the bedroom to 70F. Front temp dropped from 74F to 68F. “Fridge temp” is the heat pump outlet air, I borrowed the temp sensor from the fridge for a bit. Lungs stopped hurting, too.
I had originally started this post out of feeling anxiety and being a bit disoriented in the RV. I had planned on talking all about anxiety about moving and especially the hour and a half drive up north. I wanted to panic and talk about all of the dreams being out on the road I’ve been having and the specific anxious thoughts and feelings I have when I think about being on some random highway far from “home” and panicking. I keep coming back to the thought of the RV being our home and wherever I go that I am home and it kinda short circuits it.
I don’t like living in Indianapolis. The traffic, the crime, the memories. The whole reason I moved here was due to meeting Amanda and wanting to try settling down with her. I currently live about 15 minutes away from where she had moved to during the divorce and the house I rented down the block, Indianapolis Eastside. Even after she moved again, I’m still within a 15-20 minute drive of her.
I think back to living in Lafayette and how much I loved that city, it had everything I wanted while still being easy to drive across town. The co-working center, gym, mom’s house is a 45 minute drive or so up north, straight shot. I think about all the times I drove up to mom’s house, alone and with someone and how the drive isn’t that bad. I think about no longer being in Indianapolis and how good that is going to be for me, not just moving away, but to get out of my bubble.
I want to sit here and panic about it, but it’s hard to as the truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to feel and can’t sit here and predetermine my experience. Yeah, sure, there’s going to be anxiety around the drive. Even if I have to pull over or come back “home”, the truth is, the lease is ending and I don’t have a choice. I also have everything I own and care about in the RV. I have a hot shower and private bathroom wherever I am, my gaming computer and camera, my partner and cat.
It’ll be nice to be at my family’s house, I know that I am safe there, even if they drive me a little nuts sometimes.
I also have several other experiences of this cycle; of agoraphobia, anxiety, and breaking free from it. It feels like it’s the right time to break free from it again, it’s the next goal and benchmark, the longer trip. Once I’m there, I’m there and had survived, the spiritual gaslighting curse broken, the final step.
Brains are dumb in some ways, “BUT WHAT IF YOU PANIC?” Yeah, and? What if I panic? How is it different than any other fucking time I’ve panicked? It’s uncomfortable, sure. It can be very much so. But it hasn’t killed us and can’t. There isn’t going to be that one panic attack that “finally” takes me out. In fact, even though these last few years have been some of the most challenging of my life, it just means that we’ve panicked in slightly new and different ways and it still hasn’t taken me out.
Oh no, panicking while driving. I guess I’ll just have to shake and cry in my big ass RV with the Jeep in tow. May even have to pull over and jump in the shower WITH RUNNING, HEATED WATER and take a nervous shit in MY PRIVATE BATHROOM. May even need to take a moment and play on my BOMB ASS GAMING PC or PET MY CAT. Could even LAY DOWN AND CUDDLE MY PARTNER. Sounds pretty terrible, huh? š¤£
Panic was being on the flight back from Portland in rough turbulence coming into Salt Lake City airport and death gripping the chair arms while pinning my leg so it hurt as a point of focus until we were on the ground. And even though we swore we’d rent a car and drive the rest of the way back, the flight back was actually pretty awesome and very calm. Even if that flight was even worse, I guess I’d just have to puke and get it over with, I’d feel better after and we’d eventually get on the ground, one way or another. The discomfort would eventually end, regardless of what happened and flight is the safest form of travel.
I’m just ready to be out and while I think living at mom’s forever isn’t desirable or wanted, I’m IN A FUCKING RV! Like Jesus Christ, I’m in an RV and not pinned down or trapped anywhere š If I wanna go back to Lafayette for a bit, I can, if I wanna fuck off and go to Nashville, IN and spend every day in the Inn having breakfast and checking out the shops, I CAN. If I get tired of the cold and wanna park my ass on the beach in Florida and go shirtless every day, go swimming, I CAN. Man, imagining going on a lunch break and noticing the sound of the ocean outside your window, walking onto the beach and collecting some shells?
Travel scares the fuck out of me.. but like, should it? As long as we have the RV, or at least the ability to rent a hotel and have transportation, is it really that scary? Things are much more alike than they are different around the world. People still have two eyes, two ears, they breathe oxygen and most of us like fast food. Something in my brain thinks that anything outside of my little bubble doesn’t exist or that gravity is inverted or something. It’s the same feeling that sailors must of had thinking they’d navigate their ship off the edge of that flat earth, just waiting for the sudden and unexpected feeling to free fall forever when they hit the edge, but the thing is, they were right there to catch themselves all along and it ended up being more of the same, not different.
I think there’s beauty in that, there’s God in that somehow and it’s quite poetic. I’ll just keep driving and there will continue to be road, and if not, flat earth (at least here in Indiana). The worst that can happen is death, no matter what happens and honestly, it’s always there anyway. Even death, as permanent and terrifying that is, is an eventual release of misery and panic. Even though I just got hit super hard with the feeling of dread that rocks me to my core and makes me cry for a moment.. I just realize that no matter what I do, someday I won’t exist and it fucking scares me. I’m gasping and crying out in terror, looking out in the abyss right now.
That’s the thing that has been the hardest these last several years. Around the time I was with Elaine, I started to have these feelings of mortality, of extensional angst before going to sleep. I started hating sleep as I likened it to death. Being unaware of one’s self and time passing. I’m forcing myself to write about it right now even though it’s easier to distract and shove it away. I just get to thinking that me, myself, and all that I am, me perceiving the world will some day no longer exist and that I’ll be dead forever, for eternity. I’m bawling my eyes out right now, I hate it so much. That no matter what I do, I’ll be at that moment of death and no longer exist anymore.
I’m so sad. Everyone I know and love, everything I know and who I am will just no longer be here and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I’m trembling and it’s hard to type. During my divorce when I lived with Lo, I’d suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and just feel this terror, it hits so hard that I audibly whimper, I have a few times during this episode already and it hit like a freight train. More nights than not, I woke up and felt this. I’d wake up Lo and have a discussion about death. It’d eventually pass and I’d go back to sleep.
Man, that just hit me and it was immediate. I’m still trembling a bit but coming back down. Sitting here with this tobacco in my mouth that’ll likely lead me to a very painful and early death. Cancer sounds terrible and yet, I cling to tobacco as a crutch to somehow help with anxiety and mortality, how does that work?
I don’t know what this experience and feeling is. I think that on a certain level it’s anxiety manifesting in a different way and having a sudden panic attack that comes and passes. Maybe it’s the root of the entirety of my anxiety and panic disorder and I’m getting to the seed of it. At least for me, that’s my seed. My anxiety isn’t about embarrassing myself or letting people down, it’s dying, really. It’s about being in the car or away from home, feeling “trapped” and unable to get help.
If I could somehow overcome and accept death, or at least get a more solid spiritual framework, I think it would really help me. Because other than the discomfort of the anxiety itself, what really would there be to panic about if I didn’t fear, or if death didn’t bother me as much? The afterlife seems so incredibly nice to believe in as long as you take out the hell part in some belief systems. But I mean… even in hell, you are still existing in some way, right?
As a thought experiment, would it be more preferrable to just not exist or experience eternal damnation? On one hand, you just wouldn’t exist, so it wouldn’t matter. It’d be like it was before you were born, which if you try and think about it it’s weird. In fact, thinking about that makes me want to throw myself into another panic as lol. I can’t make sense of before I was born an if that what it is like, that sounds terrifying, right? Or does it? Is it terrifying? Does terror even exist? Now I’m starting to cry again.
No, if I strongly believed in God or some sort of solid religious or spiritual framework, I wouldn’t have to feel this, or if I just accepted death, some fucking how. I just turned 35, is this what a midlife crisis looks like? LOL. Most old people when interviewed say that death doesn’t bother them, that’s comforting in a way.
Ironically, I think some of it for me is feeling like I’ve missed out on so much and these fears of mortality effect me the most when I’m in the agoraphobic state. I can remember living alone and living alone in the RV in Lafayette. I experienced some lonely nights and some anxiety, but I didn’t wake up or consider death this often. I think some of it is the fear of just being stuck here and not being able to experience more, to experience enough, you know? Bastard of a Catch 22, right? Anxious about going places as I’d die, anxious staying home because I’m just at home and doing fuck all. Lol.
I think under a lot of my hurt and anger that it was, and still is to an extent sad that Amanda and I didn’t work out. I’m sad that I was emotionally closed off and I’m sad that I had just gotten married and how quickly it fell apart. I’m sad that my kid is no longer in my life and I’m upset with myself that I agreed to an open relationship, even though in retrospect, there seems that there was no way it wouldn’t of eventually happened knowing who is she now and how I was being used to replace someone else, the rebound.
I’m a VERY different person now in some regards for damn sure. More emotionally mature in some ways, some more work needed in others. Kind of an obvious comment as duh, the only constant is change, but still, it’s reassuring and how I craft my story to make myself the hero.
I had never been so sad, my soul ripped open and it poured out of me, but even then, the tears stopped eventually and it felt good to have cried, crumpled up on the floor in front of our family portrait. She never saw me in that, and I don’t think she cared, or she did, but someone else was more important and tending to their tummy aches and stomach bleeding due to self imposed alcoholism after gastric bypass surgery was much more important. No, I wasn’t the right person, and she wasn’t for me, no matter how much I wanted it to work and how I felt for her at the time.
I bring it up not because I’m currently missing her or anything, it’s always coming back to this round of agoraphobia and the anger and frustration being thrown back into it these last few years due to the extreme stress and trauma I experienced.
It was just a super fucked up situation and I couldn’t think of anything more addictive to the emotional addict than NRE and a love triangle. I know because I felt it and empathed off of that shit, hard and somehow knew the end of things.
Anyway, I’d do well to listen to come christian sermons this week and build up some of that emotional and spiritual fortitude. It’s just been so nice, regardless of the contents of my writing, to be relatively free from anxiety and stress these last few months. Things come up here and there, but really, it’s been so much better and calmer lately; a reason why I think that bit of mortality panic is trying to hard to tear though. It’ll be alright, Ross, I got you!
We are now at a steady state temperature, the heat pump is stable at 106F and the bedroom, front is settled at 69F, nice. It feels just a tiny bit chilly, but comfortable. Self note, the heat pump is on Turbo fan speed and 76F thermostat.
Ross Fisher 