AGORAPHOBIA - EMERGENCY EXITS - A short story by calogero ferlisi

“…the term is now taken to include fears not only of open spaces but also of related aspects such as the presence of crowds and the difficulty of immediate easy escape to a safe place (usually home). The term therefore refers to an interrelated and often overlapping cluster of phobias embracing fears of leaving home: fear of entering shops, crowds, and public places, or of travelling alone in trains, buses, or planes.[...] The lack of an immediately available exit is one of the key features of many of these agoraphobic situations…”. (The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, World Health Organisation, Geneva, 1992).

Has it ever happened to you?
One day I awoke suddenly in the early morning. It looked like a very busy day. I recalled that I had people to meet, places to go, phone calls to make, papers lying on my office desk.
Suddenly these became unreasonable reasons for getting up. Why should I do this? I wondered: “What for? What for?”
I stayed there, comfortably lounging in bed.
My eyes stared at the white ceiling. Not a sound in the deserted house.
How had I reached this point in my life, with no motivation, no purpose to get out of my soft, warm bed?
I began to wonder when was the last time I had really dreamed. I had a strong longing for something that would make facing my daily life worthwhile, and I couldn’t think of one thing.
I felt abandoned, lonely.
In a loud voice I asked: “What has happened to me?” But at that very moment I realised I was missing something that I had once had, some time before. Something that had always given the right sense to everything.
I had lost Me.
Until that moment we had always been together. I was so used to Me, I hadn’t even noticed when I lost his company, or when he had decided to leave.
I had to search for him everywhere. I could not afford to be lazy about it, because this was my dearest life-mate that was missing.
I just had to find Me. Anything else could wait.

So began my anxious search for Me.
I didn’t know where to look, as Me could be anywhere. He could have fallen asleep on a street corner, God knows where. He could have lost his way home, or maybe he was still in me, and I just couldn’t feel him. In that case I just needed somebody on the outside to recognise me as Me, because I couldn’t. Or familiar scenery, noises that might stir my consciousness. I might find Me looking for me.
Could anybody help to set up this meeting?
I was even afraid of the meeting itself - would I recognise him? Though we’d been together since birth, I had never really looked at him. What would he look like? What form was I looking for?
It was my fault, I admit it.
If we saw each other again I would apologise at once and make him forgive me for not caring about Me. I would have begged his pardon for all the attention I hadn’t paid to Me.

Mustering up all my strength, I ran past the door of the building we used to live in, wondering when was the last time I had felt we were together. It was hard to work out these moments, because I didn’t know why he had disappeared. I could not find a link to any specific circumstance. No landmark.
I stopped as my feet reached the pavement. I was in the street without Me. And I was very upset about it.
Neighbours. Acquaintances with their frozen, wooden smiles. I started to feel ashamed of my inexplicable lack. It made me feel naked.
Did I have to tell them my secret? Could I keep it as a secret? Or was it obvious?
They waved to me in an odd way. They seemed suspicious, as if they were thinking: “That boy, he’s always been so strange”. Of course, none of them had ever lost his Me. What kind of person could that happen to?
I was sweating, with palpitations: “They can’t understand me, because I’m not one of them any more”.
If I had told them my troubles, they would have been convinced I was insane. They couldn’t judge me, I couldn’t defend myself. I’d have found the solution on my own. Better to keep quiet, to give them a nod and go. I decided I would pass through the crowds like a ghost, just calling in a whisper for Me, and trying not to be noticed.
If only I had had an invisible cloak to hide my shame!
Shifting the direction of my eyes, just staring downwards, I started walking awkwardly.
Stomach cramps, chills. Everything felt unreal.
I just needed an emergency exit.

It could be the park where I should be searching, and there it might be easy not to be noticed, not to face people, hiding behind the bushes. Quick, that way! Even if my legs wouldn’t respond to the commands coming from my brain.
So I ran like a lame man, along the walls of elegant buildings, leaning against them.
Finally I arrived and looked at the scenery I had never seen through the eyes of that sickness.

STADTPARK

In front of me was the city park: a park dressed in the misery of the city, living in synchronicity with its rhythm, soiled by the city rubbish, covered by its grey dust, sown with cigarette butts.
Human beings had conquered nature, artificial geometries had rearranged the random order of things for people’s enjoyment.

I could see crowds of teenagers lighting joints and smoking them, lounging on the grass. A drunken tramp clashed with a jogger wrapped in his posh sporty gear. None of them apologising or complaining. Just two separate worlds, ignoring each other even after they’d collided. Bicycle traffic jams and crashes on gravel paths. Half-naked corpses on their lunch break lying out on Armani beach towels so as not to be contaminated by the grass: ten minutes for the front, ten minutes for the back. Dogs pissing, dog-owners staring at them anxiously, holding plastic spades in case of emergency. Young couples on wooden benches kissing or fighting, not worried about being seen or heard.
Everywhere laughter, voices, noises, mobiles ringing.
The park was not such a safe place for me as I had thought.
But then I was sick and I had a darker view of the world.

The time was when I liked going to the park, when Me and I went together. I think it was when I was still an urban child in a gardenless flat-family. Then I looked at the park as if the shape of nature was in it, not just a reflection filtered by somebody’s design. If I had been told the park had been designed, I would probably have thought by God.
I had my own designs for the park. I remembered how strongly I had wanted to build my house in a tree.
I would have brought my toys there, just inviting the few best friends I had. And I would have been proud of my house between the leaves and the birds, two metres above everyone else. My world apart would have made me feel so special.
Ever since that time I had wanted to be a refugee. What did I want to escape from?
I could clearly remember feeling such determination when I put my suggestion to my family. But they persuaded me to relinquish my fascinating idea. They said: “It’s pretty dangerous playing in trees” and “If every child had his own tree-house in the park, they would be like cities in the trees, there wouldn’t be enough room for everybody”. So, in the face of their resistance, I stopped arguing about it.

I realised that, since then, Me had been subject to many offences due to my weak will. Perhaps that was why the park had lost its magic for me. Me was not there, I knew.
“Focus on your goal”.
I had to abandon my thoughts about the park. I had a bigger duty. I had to dive into the heart of the city, as I supposed Me to be there, inside all that mess. It didn’t matter that I felt as if the grim reaper was waiting for me. Even if it meant the end, Me and I had to meet before. I got out of that nightmare of nature and jumped on a tram. Although the emotions I had felt there would follow me throughout my research, as I later realised.

NUMBER SEVEN TRAM

Inside the tram.
People. Too many people for such a small, self-propelled space. People going who knows where. People with just their direction in common. People spending the whole day travelling from one terminus to the other.
Maybe they had lost the reason for their actions too. But they didn’t look at me with complicity. There seemed instead to be disapproval in their glances. I couldn’t ask for their understanding or sympathy.
Bodies rubbing against strangers’ bodies. Sweat and perfumes mixed in my nostrils, nauseating me. I could smell the odour of their sexes.
I heard my heart beating louder and louder. My ears couldn’t stand the noise raging inside me.
Air, not enough air in that orgy.
I couldn’t breathe, the walls were getting nearer, space was closing in. All around those cunning devils tormented me with a kaleidoscope of faces drawing closer to me. The eyes they fixed upon me were hitting me. I was bleeding.
But I had to press on towards the city, I couldn’t give up this time.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of that human-infected air and whispered: “Me! Me, where are you?” I could feel their bacteria in my throat.
Difficulty swallowing.
I leant against the window and tried to open it. Broken. I couldn’t escape by that exit. I gazed at the shopping bags lying on the floor. They looked like insuperable obstacles between the doors and me. I stopped calling for Me and people no longer paid me any attention.
Trembling, I reached the doors: an obstacle race through people and packages. Neither wanted to touch or be touched.
When the tram stopped I got out and looked anxiously around.
Paralysis. The situation had got even worse.

JAKOMINI PLATZ

I had arrived in the commercial square.
Nothing graceful in sight. Architectural aesthetics hadn’t made their mark on the place. I couldn’t find harmonic rules anywhere. Bad construction and building sites were overwhelming, lying heavy on my empty soul. Luminous signs in front of the shops. A McDonald’s menu sparkling on a wall, reflecting the sun’s rays. All around tourists sat and sipped Eiskaffee like zombies. Their chins were stained with Cappuccino froth, their teeth brown-spotted by cigarette smoke. Saliva drops sat on the corners of their lips.
Their mouths were moving ceaselessly. It might be they were explaining philosophical concepts, teasing, starting up or breaking up relationships, telling lies or truths, it seemed. I saw it all but couldn’t catch a single word.
Their colours especially shocked me.
Blond Germans, I supposed, with unnaturally pink, sunburnt, healthy countenances. Italians with fluorescent rucksacks. French girls consulting maps of the city. East European eyes of ice and platinum heads. Rumanians, Bulgarians, Indians, Japanese, Africans with their mysterious deep brown glances.
Catholics, Protestants, Hindus and Muslims.
An Iraqi family planning the next White House explosion by buying a child an ice cream.
Everybody was just passing through. Deciding on another place to go. Just having a rest, somebody was taking a nap on the pavement.

And I was still standing there, just where the number seven tram had left me.
Everybody was passing me by, not caring about me, avoiding bumping into me, and I was standing like a fool with legs of reinforced concrete. Suddenly an old lady stopped, looked at me with a cruel face and shouted something at me. Then she regained her composure and went on her way, as if nothing had happened.
What did she mean? I didn’t really understand. The inner buzzing of my pounding heart stopped me from hearing.
But I thought it sounded like: “You must be happy”.
Was it possible?
Another man, Egyptian I supposed, shouted at me in the same way, in a different language, but I realised - I don’t know how - that his words had the same meaning. The fake smiling faces of the advertisements at the bus shelters became real and whispered the same message.
If only I had had my tree-house there, hidden by the branches, I might have climbed into it and isolated myself, might have gone to the window and shouted: “I don’t want to be happy, I want to find Me. Me, where are you?”
I tried to do it anyway, but my lungs could only utter a dreadful cry.
Two policemen left the shoplifter they’d just caught and started walking in my direction, coming to arrest me.
I stared at the handcuffs hanging from their belts.
Panic, confusion overwhelmed me.
I threw myself into the same crowd I would have preferred to avoid, straight into the confusion.

HERRENGASSE

I ran for a bit and breathlessly hid myself behind the main door of a building between shop windows. After a couple of minutes, I stole a quick glance out at the street. Nobody seemed to be on my trail.
Maybe I was safe. And I had to start searching again, not wasting time.
Being on the edge of a canyon, deciding to throw yourself down. I went.
Pedestrian area.
Nice buildings all around, tall houses built in style, well kept, painted different, pretty colours.
At their foot: shops selling clothes, shoes, perfumes. A crowd of art-nomads were queuing for an exhibition. Inscrutable businessmen in pinstripe suits were hurrying by, watching clocks and following their everyday footsteps.
I recognised some of them from the details I had noticed on other days, when I had been one of them. When I had neglected Me. I realised that they were, as I had been, repeating the same path every day, so used to it that we didn’t need to open our eyes, as if the “direction.exe file” was executed automatically on leaving home.
I mixed with them.
Of course, I would have preferred to cling to vines, swing past way above their heads! I would have had a better view for finding Me, too. But there were no vines in the street, just as there were no trees. Over my head, I could only see the black net of tram cables and the shine of the metal street lamps, spoiling the clear view of the sky, spreading electricity through the air.
Walking on my way I had reached the most important square in the city, still having found no sign of Me.

HAUPTPLATZ

I knew what awaited me there, since I had previously passed through there every day in order to get to my office.
I would have found the same assaults on my senses that I had encountered before on my urban journey, but which had now become enormous.
But there was an emergency exit that I wouldn’t have noticed, if I had not been so desperate.
Until that moment, I had always felt that climbing upwards, as the lesson of the tree had taught me, would somehow help me achieve some kind of relief. And on my left there it stood: the town hall.
The building inspired a sense of peace and safety in me, thanks to its thick walls, its harmonious compound windows, its noble, proud appearance refined by the grace of coloured flowers on its windowsills. A building challenging the grey atmosphere of the city with its imposing dome-shaped roofs and two high, very high, towers.
I had found the place for me, to rest and quietly watch in search of Me.
I started climbing, thinking what an incredible effort I had to make due to the duty I had undertaken and which I felt to be irrevocable.
Clinging to the protuberances on the façade, levering myself up on my legs, I reached the cornices, embracing statues, pulling myself up onto the sill of the first level. Climbing onwards and upwards. Second floor passed. Third. Towards the top of the tower. Getting to the edge of the sloping roof. The last push.
I needed a rest. So I sat down on the dark tiles. It was not as frightening as remaining down on the ground. I was alone, I had air, and the view of the sky had opened up. At last I could breathe. Remembering the reason I was there, I glanced downwards and realised that people had stopped walking about like robots and had gathered in a nervous crowd in the square, looking up at me with worried faces, pointing at me. I had caught their attention. I had been able to stop the grey, mundane paths of these ants.
But at that moment I was not so interested in them. I was searching to find Me.
I had a clear view over the roofs of the houses, with their red tiles and chimneypots. Many of the windows stood open to the summer sky. Inside there might be somebody else staring at the clouds, reading their messages. Nothing for me, nothing I could decipher.
Walking across a far-off building were some roofers, wearing helmets and pausing for a sandwich: they didn’t notice me. Birds were landing on radio aerials, radio aerials that were receiving short, medium, long waves. Was there any signal for me? No, there wasn’t.

Suddenly, just as I was wondering where Me could be, a little sparrow landed on the edge of the slope in front of me. In its beak it held a leaf. I couldn’t ask it about Me, either. I kept my eyes on it until it decided to fly away, till its brown feathers started dipping in the direction of a big gap between the roofs, another square.
As it disappeared I noticed a shine coming from the square that led up to the mountain. I was drawn by it, I felt I had to get down at once and find its source. I took a deep breath and started to clamber down, trying not to get miserably squashed on the pavement full of grumbling people.
As my feet touched the ground and I realised I was safe, they drew nearer to me out of curiosity. But I pushed my way through the astonished crowd and ran towards the next square.
I ran down the connecting street, throwing myself down the middle of the road. I dodged a tram and arrived at my destination.
Anxiety. Pain from my injuries.

SCHLOSSBERGPLATZ

I realised that the light I had seen was the reflection from a small mirror abandoned in the middle of the public space. I approached it with suspicion. I stood there looking at the simple object, without any frame or decoration.
Suddenly an incredible noise broke out in the square. I looked straight ahead of me and saw that dozens of rats were running at me from the tunnel that led to the heart of the mountain. Quite by instinct I caught up the mirror in my hand and glanced at it briefly, thinking I would run away with it. On it there was a message written in lipstick. I read quickly: “Schön das du da bist. Ich hab’ dich gesucht” . In German, a language I had not known beforehand. And despite this, I understood every single word of the message. And I felt it was meant for me.
Everything around me stopped. The monsters disappeared.
I realised I could at last clearly understand what the people around me were saying. They were speaking in German.

Me and I sat down on a stone step, together at last - even just for a trial period - and we stared up at the small mountain looming above the square, wondering how to reach the top. It was a lazy dinosaur’s back of stone, surrounded by the city. It was the only urban mountain I had ever seen, with hundreds of steps running up its sides. And the cleverness of human beings had shaped it for their own purposes, creating a complex system of caves, tunnels and underground lifts to get to the top. So on the top it was crowded with tourists and lovers, amazed at the beautiful, romantic scenery. But then, none of them could make us afraid any more.

Verfasser/in:

Calogero Ferlisi