Animated chatter and laughter broke the silence. Emily glanced up from her book. Hesitantly she rose, placed another log on the fire and stepped towards the frosted window.
The scene outside brought a smile to her pale, delicate face. Children were attempting to build a snowman but were becoming immersed in a snowball fight. Their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes among cheerfully coloured hats, scarves and coats created the perfect Christmas card image. They were tumbling around in the snow, squealing and laughing, and Emily couldn’t help but chuckle at their antics. At one point, a little boy mistakenly kicked the half created snowman, and his snowy head fell to the ground with a thud. The small carrot they’d used for his nose got unceremoniously trodden on and the black buttons to mimic his eyes got lost in the flurry of snow. Emily felt sorry for the semi-built snowman.
She moved away from the window before they saw her and stared intently at the fire she had made earlier. Deep orange flames were darting up the chimney and the room was now cosy and warm, yet Emily longed to be embracing the coldness of the outdoors. She wanted to pull on a thick coat, race outside and leap into the thickly fallen snow. She would show those children how to build a snowman. The thought of crunching snow beneath her feet on her garden path, or scooping it into her hands and letting it fall between her fingers filled her with pleasure. Yet she knew she couldn’t. She knew the moment she opened her door, all the feelings of panic, uncertainty and unreality would flood her and overwhelm her. She was safer inside.
Emily couldn’t really remember when it all began, only that it seemed to have lasted forever. A long time ago when she had been visiting a friend, unpredictable terror had gripped her by the throat, so bad she thought she was bound to faint. She had rushed home, frantic with fear and not even her kind and caring husband could console her. Eventually she calmed down. They had even worked out together that she had felt unwell because she was in the early stages of pregnancy but that knowledge did not quell the anxiety when she stepped outside again. The memory of visiting her friend filled her mind, and trapped her, trapped her inside their house...for the next 10 years.
Emily lost the baby. She didn’t know if the worry and stress had caused her to miscarry but the heartbreak of their loss stayed with her. Her days became a monotony of sadness and anxiety. Joe tried to get her help. A doctor even came to visit; found her to be articulate and bright but fearful and depressed. He recommended small steps into the outside world, ways of changing her thoughts, and medication. She tried them all. They all failed for her. In the last few years she had finally accepted that this was her life. She had no power to change it, it had happened to her and that was that. Looking through their living room window at the magnificent mountains behind their picturesque garden, watching the television and listening to Joe’s stories about his work were her only links to the outside world.
Emily may have given up but her husband hadn’t. He was always coming home with books on agoraphobia, articles he had found on the internet. Her guilt increased as she watched the worry lines deepen around his forehead and her heart ached when she saw hope for a breakthrough shining in his eyes and then die again as he watched her withdraw from him. How she wanted, longed, to give him back his laughing, vibrant wife. But she had left, a long time ago and only a shadow of her former self remained.
Yet the soft falling of snow, the chattering children and the forlorn snowman awakened a yearning deep inside that Emily had tried before to suppress. She wanted to breathe the air and feel the snow melt on her skin. She wanted to come alive. The children had raced off, probably home for their tea. Now was the time. She just wanted to try.
Emily walked steadily towards her front door. She knew she mustn’t think. She knew that if she did, she would never do it. She could feel her heart beating frantically and as she put her hand on the door handle, she saw it tremble so badly that her grasp felt weak. She took a deep breath and almost immediately felt light headed. Her vision altered and took on a surreal appearance and the panic began to build. But at the same time as her heart raced and she gasped for breath, she opened the door involuntarily. It swung away from her, banging back on its hinges, making her sensitised body feel like it was screaming with shock as the outside world swam into fuzzy focus. Instantly, everything was too bright and too loud, smells she hadn’t smelt for so long invaded her nostrils causing her to feel nauseous. The cold air smarted her eyes and smacked against her pallid cheeks, drying out her lips and stopping her from breathing deeply as her lungs contracted against the frozen air. She stood like a statue, paralysed with fear. A single tear ran down her cheek. She couldn’t move and yet everything inside her body was moving too fast. What had she done? She just wasn’t ready. Thoughts tumbled relentlessly through her mind. Joe was going to find her like this; frozen to the spot. People would see her. There had to be something terribly wrong with her this time; she’d never felt this awful before, she was sure. Something really bad was bound to happen. Never had she experienced terror where she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She had to find a way to turn around, to go back indoors, to get over this terrible anxiety, to find a distraction, any distraction, to survive again.
Despite her unbearable fear, a fear that must surely take her away from reality and to another dark world, her eyes dragged to the snowman. He didn’t really look like a snowman anymore. His head had become a crumbled mass of snow. The children had only half heartedly created the body and a few black buttons were scattered about. An image suddenly appeared in Emily’s mind of a jolly snowman complete with a red bobble hat, blue stripy scarf, gold shiny buttons and a pipe. She gulped loudly and then managed to hold the door frame for support. She’d moved, thank goodness, but she was frozen to the core. Perhaps if she stood like this for a while the anxiety would recede. Coldness she could handle. Her eyes were trying to become accustomed to the whiteness of the countryside in front of her. Luckily all was quiet; no one else was around. She hoped fervently it would stay like that until she had at least managed to get a grip on her anxiety; enough to be able to turn around and flee indoors. A surge of panic raced through her again as she realised that she was partially outside. She hadn’t done this in so many years. And her anxiety through doing so was extreme. But was it really any different to when she’d had panic attacks indoors? Her eyes focused on the snow capped mountains beyond her garden. She had stared at them so many times through her window, with longing. Now she could see them clearly. Their beauty mesmerised her...and her panic eased. Distraction always helped, but this time she was actually partially outside! A sensation she hadn’t felt before suddenly overwhelmed her and she felt herself smile numbly. She actually felt something like joy! It was a developing bubble of pleasure enveloping her and filling her emptiness with warmth. She couldn’t even remember the last time she felt anything like this, if she ever had in her whole life.
New thoughts began to circle her mind. She knew exactly what she wanted to do. She abruptly turned around. She could still feel anxiety in the pit of her tummy and her vision was far from perfect but her legs were no longer weak and her heart not beating quite so fast. She could cope with these sensations. Leaving her door wide open and letting all the heat escape from the house, she climbed the stairs steadily to her bedroom. There she flung open her wardrobe door and her eyes sparkled with excitement. Quickly she removed her thick woollen coat from the back of the wardrobe and gazed at it in wonder. She had forgotten what it looked like! Her breath was emerging in small gasps and her head was pounding but she knew why she felt such feelings and she knew they were anxiety only, and nothing more serious. Eagerly she opened drawers and pulled everything out. She raced downstairs and sped into the kitchen. She knew what she wanted and where to find it.
By the time she had reached her front door, her anxiety had all but gone but now she faced the real challenge. Without wasting another moment, she stepped outside and shrugged off years of isolated unhappiness and despair. She took another couple of steps, breathed in the fresh icy air and glanced behind her as if to remind herself of her past life but only her house stood there, familiar and glowing cheerily in the whiteness of a winter wonderland.
Emily’s feet sunk into the snow and she giggled and looked behind her again but this time it was to see that she was creating fresh, new footprints in the snow. She felt like she was treading on a new world; her brave new world.
She took her time in building her snowman; amazed at her ability to do so. It had been such a long time that she had been able to do anything without there being a hint of a tremble or a gasp of breath, without her head swimming or unreality bursting in and taking her to another world. This time, though, she moulded the snowman’s head without shaking hands and she pressed the gold, shiny buttons into his robust body without her needing any extra breath. She’d forgotten all about feelings of serenity and peace and it made her feel so vital and alive that she laughed out loud. She couldn’t wait for Joe to come home and see what she had achieved. She couldn’t wait to tell him she had joined the world again.
When Emily’s husband returned after a tiring day at work, he dreaded seeing his wife. So often he found her curled up on the sofa, trying in desperation to force her fears away and his heart ached for her. He wanted to take her pain and endure it for her, to smooth away the worry from her face, to take her in his arms and reassure her that the world wasn’t a fearful place. But he knew she had to find this out herself; she had to overcome her frightening memories. He didn’t even know how she’d survived her desperate journey, he was just thankful that she had. He wanted to see her smile again but he had begun to stop hoping.
Until today.
As soon as he opened the door, Emily rushed towards him, her face beaming; her eyes alight with unshed tears. “I did it,” she laughed ecstatically; “I did it!”
She dragged him beaming to the living room window, as he tried to take his coat off in the confusion. He looked at her mystified as Emily jumped up and down like a child in her excitement, gesturing wildly to the garden outside.
For a moment, Joe thought she had gone mad, that all the fear and anxiety she had endured had finally broken her, made her crazy with despair. But as he looked into his wife’s eyes, he saw the spirit there that he thought had gone forever, a sparkle and vitality he thought he’d never see again. A bubble of hope began to rise within him.
“I made the snowman,” she gasped, “I did it on my own, went out there and built it!”
Joe gazed out of the window and saw a fat snowman sitting comfortably on their snowy garden. His long carrot nose was wonky, his multicoloured scarf askew but his gold buttons glinted in the late sun. He was the typical jolly snowman; a wonderful celebration of the festive season.
Joe glanced at his wife and saw a single tear trickle down her cheek and he began to doubt. She hadn’t been outside for 10 years. She was so anxious so much of the time. Sometimes when he just turned the pages of a newspaper it could unsettle her. How could she have gone outside? She was saying this to make him feel better. So that he wouldn’t give up on her. Sorrow filled him. Nothing had changed. He had to be strong for her.
But then he saw the footprints in the snow. They led from their house to the snowman, more than once and around the snowman, but they came from their home! With incredulous delight, he turned to look at his beautiful, clever wife and realised the tear was one of joy as she smiled so happily into his eyes.
“Oh Emily,” he whispered into her hair as he embraced her, “So very brave, how did you do it?”
“I wanted to live again,” she replied, looking again outside, she just couldn’t tear her eyes away, “I realised I wanted that more than all the anxiety that I felt, and the feelings began to subside. It was amazing.”
“You know what this means now, don’t you?” Joe said as he suddenly lifted her up into the air and laughed at her surprised expression, “We can climb the mountains together, one day. We can do all those things we have dreamed of doing.”
“We can,” said Emily, marvelling at how calm she felt as she swung around in his arms to gaze at the snow capped mountains from the window. They were breathtaking in their glorious beauty and they had been waiting for her to explore them all this time. “And when we do, I will climb the highest mountain and it really will feel like I am on top of the world, just how I feel today.”
And this time, they went outside together and made fresh footprints in the snow.
The End
© Lana Starbright 2011
