Accepting My Daily Normal Via Taco Salad.

My husband and I are driving back from the lake and I decide I need a couple of things from the grocery store for our dinner. It’s 107 degrees outside and the dogs are with us so I know I am going to have to run in on my own while they wait in the air conditioning. 

Seems normal enough. 

Not for an agoraphobic.

 I’ve panicked in this exact store a few times now and so the imprint of fear is already in my mind on the way there. I tell myself that I can do this. I just need sour cream, cilantro and grapes. I already know that the grapes and the cilantro are near the entrance/exit and they are doable. It’s the sour cream that’s got me nervous. It’s in the back of the store and this store is big. I grab the grapes and the cilantro and I feel normal enough. I tell myself I can see the door and I’m just like everyone else around me. I make a mental inventory of my exit and where my husband is parked in case I need to dash. I start to the back of the store and I spot the back wall reading: Dairy. I squint my eyes and I can see the words sour cream on the shelf sign and those little tubs staring back at me. Without my consent, my feet stop walking. I stand there in the middle of the produce section and just look at the far-off-goal of those small, white, gleaming containers of sour cream. It’s not even for me. It’s for my mom. We are having taco salad for dinner and she doesn’t like greek yogurt as a sour cream substitute and so I want to surprise her with the real deal. But I can’t get to it. 

Agoraphobia is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as an “abnormal fear of being helpless in a situation from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing that is characterized initially often by panic or anticipatory anxiety and finally by the avoidance of open or public places”.  I had my first panic attack at the after party of my ninth grade dance. I was surrounded by friend/acquaintances and it hit me like a freight train. All of a sudden my surroundings started to blur, my body felt like it was floating and my hearing was tunnel-like. My heart began to beat out of my chest and I had an acute need to flee. Since then it’s been 26 years of an up and down battle with my mental health. With age though, comes acceptance and with acceptance comes a release of a need to care too much about fitting into a perfectly pegged hole. 

As recently as 39 I would have left the store defeated and beat myself up for the next several hours, maybe days. I would have compared myself to others and I would have told myself that I was never going to amount to anything if I couldn’t get that sour cream. But I’m 40 now and something has shifted inside of me. Some sense of acceptance has been ruminating in my bones for sometime now and it’s what I’ve always prayed for, begged the universe to give me. I just wanted to relax into who I truly was. 

By this time I had walked myself up to the front of the store with cilantro and grapes in my hand about ready to ditch them. I stood there and I didn’t know what to do. As I contemplated it a very young employee walked passed me. Without planning I just said “excuse me, could you help me? Can you please go grab me a small container of sour cream? My dogs and husband are waiting in the car for me”.  I was next to the self checkout and he didn’t hesitate and told me he’d meet me at the checkout. By the time I had rang in my other items he was handing me the coveted cream. I breathed in deeply and told myself I was perfectly safe and that I had done good. I asked for help. We all need help sometimes and why not ask? Ironically I work for Trader Joes and I am the person who helps people for a living. If someone asked me that same question I would have not hesitated and ran and got it for them. The world didn’t stop and I didn’t leave defeated. Instead I solved a problem and empowered myself at the same time. Many agoraphobics can’t leave their houses. There was a short time I was housebound. I remember the pain I went through to make it around the block walking. Luckily I’ve never revisited that place and I’ve led a very full and traveled life. I’ve always allowed curiosity to get me out of the house and desire to push me to new limits. But it isn’t always easy and I realize now that I’m done looking for a “cure” to my mental health issues. Instead I am looking for acceptance and a powerful practice in the moment of now. I can only do today. 

As I briskly walked back into the heat and down the sidewalk I spotted my husband and doggies waiting for me in the car. I slid in the driver’s side seat and handed over the sour cream to my husbands lap. This was my normal and it felt perfectly good to be who I authentically was in that moment, better yet, the taco salad was more delicious because of it. 

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