A story about social anxiety and the extreme lengths it can make you go to. By Freya Desmarais.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler or read on.
I don’t know when my anxiety started. It feels like it’s always been there. As a small child I was shy and clingy. I remember hiding behind my mum’s legs a lot. I was quite a pretty baby too. Mum said people used to coo at me in the supermarket while all I would give them was my newly hatched but nonetheless on-point resting bitch face.
I asked my mum if she had any other anecdotes about my seriousness as a baby or my shyness as a kid and she adorably said this:
“Well Granny was always asking me if you were a depressed baby. You were so serious. You would have made a good poker player when you were two.”
(Somehow I think this is unlikely)
“And going around the supermarket was always slow because you were beautiful and people would stop to look at you and tried to make you smile! Major fail! You would look right through them.
...You’d smile at us though.”
To me, strangers are just that, strange, and it seems I have wanted nothing to do with them from early on. It’s hard to know which came first out of my shyness and social anxiety, but they definitely seem to be related and mutually inclusive.
I grew up and as everyone does, I adapted. I feel like I have moments where I can turn on a facade that helps me move through the world like a ‘normal person’, whatever that means. My career choice as a performer in the public eye often demands it of me, and I’m pretty good at faking it about 60% of the time.
As a teenager I became boisterous around my friends, and among them I think it would be fair to say that I am assertive and confident. An extrovert, even. I can project that most of the time, but I think, like most people, I feel uncomfortable and awkward around unknown people. This manifests to varying degrees according to my current mood and how mentally well I am.
In 2012 I had a massive bout of depression to the point where I was seriously considering suicide. Luckily for me I told my mum how I was feeling and I was on a plane home to Tauranga the next day. I lived at home from March 2012 until October 2014, when Mum and Dad moved to Melbourne and chucked me out, the heartless bastards. Just kidding, it was a coincidence as I was well enough to go out on my own again. Let’s be honest though, I probably would have gone with them if I could.
During this time at home I experienced lots of pretty hilarious moments as a part of my experience of having mental illness.
During this time at home I experienced lots of pretty hilarious moments as a part of my experience of having mental illness.
This is a story about how my social anxiety can sometimes be so strong that it makes me go to extreme lengths to avoid people. I wrote a show with some darkly funny stories but I couldn’t include them all, although this is one of my favourites that fell through the gaps. I always want to tell this story as a stand-up routine but I think it’s just got that slight twinge of sad that doesn’t really translate in a comedy club. But I don’t want you to feel sad for me. Social anxiety is annoying but it’s just another part of me, and I think this story is hilarious and ridiculous and I hope you do too.
So the family home in Tauranga was a two storied number with a totally illegal flat underneath. We used to rent it out but then Mum and Dad learned there was never any planning permission for it, so that had to stop.
So we had this self-contained flat downstairs in our house that was just not being used, as upstairs has three bedrooms as it was. Mum had been working as a receptionist at a physio with this young English physiotherapist named Claire, and struck up a bit of a friendship with her. It came up one day that Claire would have to live in a motel for a couple of weeks in between flats, so Mum said that she could live in our flat for free. A totally lovely thing to do.
I was told all this and felt slightly apprehensive about it all. At this time I was really quite unwell, so naturally the idea of a stranger coming to live with us, albeit independently, was kind of terrifying at the time. But I had no choice, and I certainly don’t expect the world to work around my mental illness like that, I just needed to harden up. Nah kidding again, but those are the challenges of real life and you can’t really get around them.
One freezing cold winter night before Claire was due to move in, I was sitting in the lounge on my computer (my natural habitat - if the internet is a whole special world for socially anxious people, then Tumblr is their country of origin. Facebook is a terrifying foreign land. And computer games are an idyllic island paradise.) The doorbell rang, the dogs went mental and mum opened the door and I heard a FOREIGN VOICE. Well, not a foreign voice. Not like a voice with an accent. I’m socially anxious not racist.
So I still hadn’t been seen, and I hadn’t yet had to say hello. This is how I know it would’ve gone if I had gone through with it and got it over with.
“ME: Hello! I’m Freya.
Claire: Hello! I’m Claire.
ME: Nice to meet you.
Claire: Nice to meet you too.
STAGE DIRECTION
FREYA LEAVES.”
But social anxiety is a thing because it is irrational. Almost everybody feels a bit nervous meeting someone new. But they’re not irrational about it.
I may have been a bit irrational.
I sat, frozen, for about one minute. That’s a long time to be sitting there with your pulse racing trying to think of the best way to escape. I realised time was of the essence, that I needed to disappear before I was required to say hello. So, I did this.
I opened the door to the deck. The wind was blowing a gale and it was properly pouring down.
I stepped outside. I closed the door as quietly as I could.
I was in a t-shirt, with no bra on underneath, and summer pyjama pants. Bare feet. The deck was so cold. The kind of cold that seeps directly into your bones.
The doorbell rang, the dogs went mental and mum opened the door and I heard a FOREIGN VOICE. Well, not a foreign voice. Not like a voice with an accent. I’m socially anxious not racist.
Now I’m on the deck. What do I do? I’ll hide. I’ll wait it out. No! I know, I’ll sneak down to my bedroom and slip in there. No one will see me and I can hide there. I creep to the outside door to my room and…
It’s locked.
Fuck.
So I sneak back, the deck creaking under my feet to the bit of the outside wall where there is no window. Safety. It’s cold though. Cold is an understatement. This is all so I don’t have to have that four sentence conversation with someone, remember. It’s too cold, I’ll have to wait out here for at least half an hour to an hour. So I do.
Well, I wait 20 minutes but it feels like an hour. In this time it becomes apparent that I need to wee. This is exacerbated somewhat, as I’m sure you understand, by the cold, the rain, and of course - waiting. If you have to wait to wee, you almost certainly will wee yourself. Like that time I walked home from school one day needing to wee and just as I put the key in the door, it all came - well, you know.
So I need to wee and I’m outside. I can’t go in because the scary monster is inside, but now I need to go in to go to the toilet. But I can’t possibly. Because of where the toilet is, I will almost certainly be seen.
So I wait.
5 minutes.
10.
My bladder is so full and it’s all I can think about, because I’m outside, soaking wet now, wind blowing on my wet clothes and skin.
15 minutes.
I have to go. I’ll try Mum and Dad’s room. It’s locked too.
I’ll have to go back through the lounge. And oh no, now that I’m soaking wet it will draw attention to me and I’ll have to explain it and oh my god how am I going to do that? It doesn’t matter - I need to wee. I HAVE to go back inside. So I take a big deep breath and put my hand on the door back into the lounge.
It’s locked.
It must have locked when I closed it coming out.
Oh shit.
I’m screwed. There is no way I’m going to call for help - then I’d have to explain myself as I said, and although that was inevitable, remember we’re in irrational territory right now so there’s no logic.
So I drop my pants.
And I squat.
I popped a squat and I wee’d okay?
And our deck, like a lot of decks, is a timber slatty deck. So there are little gaps in it of course, the gaps between the timber slabs.
Then I heard voices.
They weren’t in my head, they were IRL and they were downstairs, under the deck. In front of the flat. Mum was showing Claire the flat. What a nice thing to do. But here I was, two metres above them, weeing onto the deck and that wee was going straight through and to the ground below. Where Mum and Claire were.
With all my might I managed to stem the flow and watched through the gaps below that neither of them got too close to my effluvium.
Claire got within about 20 centimetres of it.
Luckily of course it was raining heavily, so everything was washing away and the sound of the rain blocked out the sound of my own downpour as they had approached. But it was a close call.
Have I learned anything? Not really. I could easily end up in that situation again, because that is just the nature of social anxiety really. I hope that at least next time I have an umbrella and maybe a bucket.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held at The Basement Theatre. If you have a story to tell email thewatercoolernz@gmail.com or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Phoebe Morris.
This content is brought to you with funding support from NZ On Air.