The House My Social Anxiety Built

This was always her favorite part of the day. The moment just before sunrise. Ava sat on the sofa on the back porch, looking out over the beach with her coffee in hand, and watched as the stars faded from view. She loved watching how the blackness of the night sky folded back, revealing a clear, bright, blue sky in its place. She listened as the world came to life around her. The cars began to bustle— children being driven to school and people hurrying off to work— and families began flocking to the beach.

Ava tucked the loose strands of red curls behind her ears, then turned to head inside before the beach became too cluttered with people and chatter. From behind the safety of her closed glass doors, she watched the crowd grow in front of her. She studied their smiles and drank in their laughter. She wished she could be more like them. Self-assured. Free. Happy.

But those things just did not seem to be in the cards for her.

She would not describe herself as a hermit or recluse, but she did set clearly defined boundaries. Whether or not those boundaries were healthy was another story. She had grown accustomed to keeping people at arm’s length, to not letting them see the most vulnerable parts of her soul, to protecting herself and her heart. She had learned very early on that self-preservation was the only way to guarantee her survival as every attempt at being something other than herself had only resulted in pain and misery.

She walked over to the kitchen, listening as the floorboards creaked under the weight of her steps, rinsed out the mug in her farmhouse-styled sink, and then placed it on top of the growing pile of dirty dishes. The glass cabinet doors revealed the messy, disorganized dishes stacked in the cupboards above the quartz countertops. She dried her hands on the kitchen towel that was lying halfway off of the counter, accidentally knocking it to the ground when she walked away.

She crossed through the living room, skirting her way around the light-grey sofa that was just big enough for her to sleep on by herself, walked down the dimly-lit hallway and grabbed a small shoebox that was tucked underneath her bed. She plopped down on the white comforter and began rummaging through its contents. It was cluttered with pictures, trinkets, and notes. All from him.

Ava dug through the box, looking for something specific. The yellow envelope. Underneath a picture of him and her standing in front of a waterfall, with her left hand stretched out towards the camera, was the envelope she was looking for. She pulled the wrinkled letter out of the worn envelope. Tears began to pool in her hazel eyes, making the gold flecks that speckled them even more noticeable.

Dear Ava,

I know this letter may come as a surprise, but I don’t think it should. We are completely unrecognizable. I don’t know myself anymore and if I am being honest, I do not entirely know who you are anymore, either. Neither of us are the people we were when we got married. I believe that as we age, we grow, and I was completely prepared to love every version of you. But this version of you is not growth. It is something else.

You had always appeared to me as someone full of sparkle, whose essence brightened up the world around you, but somewhere along the way, your light dimmed and it seems like you have lost yourself. I don’t know where or when or why this happened, but it has and I cannot ignore it anymore. When I try to talk to you about it, and frankly anything else, you shut down and shut me out completely. At this point, it seems like you are a hollowed out version of who I once knew. And as much as I have tried to listen, to learn, to understand you, I realize I cannot do what you are asking of me.

I cannot dim myself, or deny the future I have always hoped to have, to make you feel comfortable when you are the one who has changed. When you are the one who is pulling away. I cannot spend my life trying to reel you back into me. I still want children, a house bustling with family and friends, and a life filled with adventure, but those are not the things you want. I do not know what you want exactly, but you’ve made it clear that whatever it is, it isn’t the life we once dreamed up together. It isn't a life with me.

There is not a compromise here only sacrifice and resentment. There is not a path forward. There is not an ‘us’ anymore.

–Maxwell

Her tears fell heavy against the letter, streaking the ink on the page, but whether or not the words were legible anymore did not entirely matter. She had read his letter so many times that she had memorized those words, burned them into her mind, tattooed them across her heart. They served as a constant reminder of how she had wrecked her marriage. Of how she let the weight, the darkness of her self-talk, her thoughts, consume her, drown her, until she was nothing more than a shell of herself.

And worse of all, she was the only one to blame for this. For her sadness. For her loneliness.

She felt the world closing in on her as the heaviness of this realization weighed her heart down. She wiggled underneath the comforter and pulled it up over her head. She sobbed into her pillow until she fell asleep.

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The howling wind woke Ava from her deep sleep. She shot up in bed, her heart racing, head pounding, and bed sheets and pillowcase drenched with sweat. In a place where it is sunny almost every day of the year, this type of weather was unprecedented. She hurriedly tied her red, tangled curls up in a bun on top of her head and ran to the glass doors that separated her from the rest of the world.

She stared out at the roaring sea, watching its dark waves crash unrelentingly against the shore. The driving rain pounded against the windows and roof, and the sound of thunder nearly shook her house. She watched as the palm trees caved under the force of the wind, causing them to lie parallel to the ground below. Dense, grey clouds cluttered the sky, obscuring the sun from view, casting an ominous shadow onto the city below.

Ava could feel the beat of her heart accelerate as she hurried to her living room. She went to click on the television, but nothing happened when she hit the remote’s power button. Confused, she walked over to the light switch a few feet away and flicked it on and off a few times. But there was no change. The winds must have wiped out her power.

Then, she heard the sound of a siren through the gaps of the roaring thunder. She had never heard that sound before, but she had watched enough T.V to know that it was a warning. A signal of imminent danger. She rushed to her phone, that had begun beeping incessantly, and saw the emergency alert flash across her screen. She read the announcement, more than once, trying to process what was happening.

Everyone in her city was being told to evacuate.

A tropical storm was coming.

Ava panicked. She had never experienced something like this. She had never had to prepare for a natural disaster and had no idea where to even start. She frantically ran from the living room to her bedroom closet, pulled out the first few articles of clothing she saw, and tossed them onto her bed. She darted across the room and did the same thing with the clothes messily shoved in her dresser drawers.

She ran to the hall closet next to the front door and searched for her duffle bag. If she still had one, this is where it would be. Stuffed underneath cleaning supplies and old VHS tapes, she found the tattered bag, covered in dust and some sort of sticky liquid. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she had left her house for more than just groceries.

She ran back to her room and stuffed the clothes cluttering her bed into the raggedy bag. She scooped it up and ran into the kitchen. She grabbed water bottles and whatever snacks she could find in the disaster she called a pantry and forced them into the duffle. She left the bag on the kitchen counter and paced through her house, grabbing extra things she thought could come in handy like a phone charger and toothpaste. She did one final sweep. She felt like she had everything she needed, but at the same time like she was sure to forget something incredibly important. She knew she did not have any time to waste looking for things or reasons to stay. The best chance at her survival was getting out of this house. Quickly.

It was strange to her that after all of these years, for the first time in her life, the safest place for her was outside of these white walls.

She stood in the living room, watching the turbulent waves grow taller. Stronger. She took one last look around her house, grabbed her duffle bag, and headed for the front door. She turned the doorknob and pulled. It refused to open. She pulled harder, but it didn’t budge. She walked over to her patio doors and tried to push them open. They wouldn’t give. She tried to force open the living room windows, figuring she could climb out of them, but they did not move. She frantically ran through her house, trying to pry open every exit with no luck. Out of ideas, she ran back into the kitchen, grabbed one of her metal barstools, and chucked it at the glass doors with all of her might. But the stool bounced back towards her as if the door was made out of rubber rather than glass.

Terrified, she dialed for emergency services. But her call would not go through. Looking at her phone, she realized that she did not have signal. She dialed a few more times, more out of desperation than anything else, but all of her calls failed. She threw the phone down and ran over to her patio doors. She screamed, as loud as she could, and banged on the glass, praying that someone would see or hear her. But she saw no one. Not a single soul running by. She stepped back from the doors, straining to see if she could hear or see anything or anyone other than storm.

There were no horns honking. No people hollering. No one running from the ocean. There was no sound or sight of life. There was no one else around.

There was only her. And this storm.

She stared out at the ocean. The waves growing and intensifying with every second. The shore was almost completely covered by water and she knew it would not be long until her house was completely submerged underneath the ocean. She had to find a way out of here. Fast.

She darted to her kitchen and opened up the cabinet underneath her sink. Behind the trash can and glass vases was a small tool box. She pulled out the metal cat’s paw and hammer and ran back to the front door. She angled the metal paw under the bottom bolt that was securing her door to the doorframe. She hammered against it, which forced the bolt up, until it was loose enough for her to take the bolt out completely. She repeated this action on the next bolt.

She heard something crash into her glass doors. She turned towards the sound and saw the water forcing its way into her house through the small gaps between the doors and the floor. The water was flooding her house more rapidly than she could have anticipated.

She turned her attention back to the last bolt and pulled back the hammer. She hit the hammer into the metal paw, but the bolt did not move. She tried again, but still no movement. The water was rising quickly. She was running out of time. She tried over and over to loosen the bolt, but was getting nowhere. No amount of effort could move this final bolt.

The water was up to her shoulders. Ava was drenched. Cold. Her hands too wet to keep a grip on her tools. She was tired. Out of energy. She tried to lift the tools towards the last bolt, but could barely raise her arms.

Exhausted, she dropped them.

She stood there, unmoving, staring at the door. Knowing that she was not going to make it out of here. She was going to die here. In this house. Alone. Inside of the very walls she erected to keep herself safe.