Chapter Text
Uzi Doorman could not go outside.
Well, that wasn’t technically true. She was able to go to the local Trader Joe’s. She could go to Starbucks. She could go to a friend’s house. She could walk a block down the street. But she could only do the first two if she was accompanied by someone she knew, partly because she couldn’t drive. Looking directly into the sky caused her stomach to swoop and her brain to scream at her “GET OUT OF HERE!” and apparently that extended to seeing a bunch of the sky at once, meaning it was impossible to get a license.
She lived with her parents and got some money from SSI benefits because she was disabled and couldn’t work, but one day her longtime boyfriend N was in a play and she tried to go, she really, really, tried.
But the panic just wouldn’t let her. So she had to leave, because the world was spinning, and it felt like her throat was being choked, and she was going to die–
N understood. He was so understanding. Too understanding. She wanted him to get mad. Then she could get mad, and she wouldn’t feel bad about it, and she could yell some of her frustrations out.
And she was mad. She was fed up. She was done with everything.
And she was going to let the world know.
So she recorded a video.
[Uzi sits behind a desk, legs crossed over each other.
“I’ve decided to become an agoraphobic comedian,” she said. “But then I realized I’d need to be able to go to theaters to do that.”
A ‘ba dum tsh’ sound effect plays.
“If you have a debilitating fear of agoraphobics, you’re in luck, because you don’t see them out that much. Personally, I was an agoraphobic adolescent. A ‘quaranteen’ if you will. I had an agoraphobia support group, but I never went. I realized there was one difference between a dumpster fire and an agoraphobic . . . the fire eventually goes out.]
Uzi looked over the video one last time, satisfied, and uploaded it to her newly created YouTube channel, Agoraphobia Jokes. She told no one about this. Not her parents, not N, not V, not Thad. This was for her and her alone. Though it was possible that they would find her channel, she wasn’t going to tell them about it. They’d probably be concerned for her mental health or something. She had great mental health. She never skipped meals, or cut herself, or thought about dying.
Yeah, that was a lie. She kept track of where the band aids were at any given moment so that she could use them the next time her angst about agoraphobia reached its limit, she didn’t always care to eat, and she wanted to die sometimes because it was so hard to fight against the panic every time she went outside.
(She wouldn’t give up, no matter how much she wanted to)
(She was too stubborn for that)
(She had too many people who cared about her to die)
One more day. One more week. One more year.
She would hold on, for as long as it took.
)( )( )(
Comments
Angelica
You’re funny. This perfectly fits my dark brand of humor
Agoraphobia Jokes replied to Angelica
Ty!
Ellie
Making jokes out of real mental health disorders??? That’s so insensitive
Agoraphobia Jokes replied to Ellie
I have agoraphobia. I’m allowed to make these jokes
Uzi’s video had received a good ten likes and two comments. Not bad. Now if only half the comments (one out of two) weren’t virtue signaling. Oh well, she would ride the high of Angelica’s comment and wish more people commented. Searching for validation in social media was bad, yeah.
But that wasn’t going to stop Uzi.
She would wipe away the tears and pretend she was okay, for just a little while longer, and tell herself that she wasn’t fake. Suppressing all these negative emotions wasn’t harming her, she was just protecting her loved ones from seeing her have a breakdown! She was protecting them from her anger! She was protecting herself, too, from their potential reactions to that!
She was fine!
(She lied)