I'm becoming more and more confident going to Conestoga Mall if Mike is with me. For a long time I was able to go on my own, and then I wasn't, and now I'm sometimes able again, but it's definitely easier with Mike.
The mall has a very particular feel to me - when I am there, I feel accomplished, since it's not easy to actually get there, emotionally. I also feel like I'm in this world I know is there, but don't have as much contact with: the world of ordinary people. I didn't go to the mall at all for years and years, during a certain time of my life when I was more agoraphobic and lived further away from it. When I started going again I realized how different life is when you mainly shop at smaller stores downtown, or a few big box stores in a neighborhood plaza. The mall is on an entirely new level.
First, there are just so many, many things. I've experienced a lot of consumerist limits as an agoraphobic person, especially before online shopping. I could buy the clothes and shoes near my house. There used to be a Reitman's uptown and that was the only place I bought work clothes. I went to Zellers before it became Walmart (though I rarely buy clothes at Walmart since it feels so low quality). I often bought things a Giant Tiger next to Breithaupt Park. And of course, thrift - there used to be a lot near by.
The first time I went to the mall again after a long hiatus, it was to get a cord for my Mac, and I walked through The Bay to the get to Apple Store and was blown away. Memories of endless hours of shopping in high school and university with girl friends came back, but there was also a new feeling of just incredulity at the abundance that I had not experienced in years. I even took a picture of myself outside The Bay, me smiling in front of the long, brightly lit and coloured hallway, very happy with myself and feeling very normal. The next time I went was because I needed bike shorts, something that would be nearly impossible to find anywhere near my home. The feeling that I could go to the mall that had a huge amount of products and choose on and buy it made me feel like I had the utmost of power and free will a human could had. Of course, I was very anxious the entire time, but the sort of anxiety you might have if you were exploring the Artic or meeting the King - nervous, but like, you're fucking doing it.
I've gone maybe ten or 15 time since then, over the past six years, and the thrill is definitely still there, though I am less overwhelmed. I'm still amazed by the selection and mildly disoriented by the lights and music. It feels like a theme park.
Today I was very strategic (and Mike prefers that since he does not like to drift within a mall) and got what I needed plus some other stuff hard to find near my house. I noted I did not quite feel so much the sense that I had to buy everything (feast or famine) or that I could never keep up, no matter how much I bought (social anxiety).
Looking back over my life, I grew up without extra money for clothes and accessories. My youth and pre-teen years, I longed to fit in sartorially but we couldn't afford it (plus I had no sense of mainstream style, being, then as now, a weirdo.) Then it was the 90s and we all wore thrift and made judgements of mainstream culture, of fitting in, of buying expensive clothing with labels. Especially going to art school, we embraced weirdness. Next it was my university activism days, where aesthetic judgement was layered with moral judgement (I still cannot buy any product made by Nike). The AdBuster days, where I remember marching through Fairview Mall with a bunch of people drumming and yelling Buy Nothing on what is now Black Friday.
Ok, I'm glossing a bit. There were lots of times in high school and university where I went to the mall with friends, as I said, for the quintessential activity of window-shopping and eating New York Fries in the food court. But it didn't matter whether I judged consumerism or yearned for style - I couldn't afford it, so I was ambivalent.
Fast forward a bunch of years where agoraphobia and other interests kept me away from the mall. I returned in my mid-thirties when I started my first well paying job. Now I had the money and I was starting to get the physical access again! Cue consumerist overwhelm.
That was about 6 years ago and I honestly still don't know how to relate to having the ability to go to the mall and the ability to buy what is offered there. How do people make these choices? I get being at a boutique Uptown and making the decision whether you'll drop 200 or not on a designer dress, the only one you like in the shop. I get how you can go to GT Boutique and drop 200 on an entire wardrobe for the season. But I don't get how you can figure out which of the fifty stores and million brands you should pay a medium amount of money to buy a couple products from. I really don't know how people make the choice.
I found myself just settling on brands that either evoked not being at the mall (Roots, MEC) or brands that I desperately wanted to buy as a teen (Gap). Then Roots became crappy quality so recently its just Mike goes to Indigo and I got to the Gap and get a bunch of jeans so I don't have to buy more pants for a few years. That kind of shopping. But it's not because I'm truly a minimalist. I have come to really love fashion and understand it better than I used to. I just don't know how to make a decision within such abundance. I suppose if it was infinitely wealthy, maybe it would be easier - but then I would definitely feel morally uncomfortable with the potential waste.
Which leads me to my experience at the mall today. As my anxiety gets less and less at the mall and I'm more and more familiar, I experience it less like a theme park ride and more like a park. My mind isn't so engaged by the thrill of novelty and the hard work of cognitive behavourial therapy, mindfulness and breath work. My wallet can afford generally speaking what I want, and my aesthetic sense can, if not make a decision, at least understand the elements of wardrobe building, and balancing trends with classic and personal style. I feel more ... competent? I think my brain has more capacity.
After reading a great analysis of the connections between hyper-consumerism, hoarding/clutter and emotional needs in Tracy McCubbin's Making Space for Happiness, I realized that, as she says, consumerist culture to the level we are experiencing it is sick. That's what I saw the mall as today - a sick place. What I had previously only been able to process as decision-paralysis, overstimulation and craving, I now see as just a place that manifests a deep illness in our culture. I'm not incompetent to dress myself or buy stuff or fit in, and I'm not going to be a better or more loved person for having the latest look and tech. No. There is objectively too many things at the mall; too many versions of the same thing, and too many unnecessary things. More than any of us could ever need, and, we'll never be rid of them, either in our homes or in our landfills and oceans.
While of course we do need things and can healthily enjoy buying some beautiful things, there is nothing to aspire to in this place. You might as well be walking around the emergency room in a hospital or a the rank and dirty mess of an extreme hoarder house. Our feast or famine biology deludes us into thinking this is a place of wealth, beauty, meaning and almost spiritual transcendence. It's not. In many ways, it's just a future garbage dump.
"Though of course, for me," I continued, as I ranted this entire realization above to Mike as we were getting into the car to go, "It also represents emotional healing, wellness and growth. It represents great achievement."
I sat in the back seat and ate the sandwich I brought in a Tupperware to avoid buying more plastic at the Food Court. As an agoraphobic, eating my own food in a mall parking lot on a sunny day feels like being a Burning Man to me, I feel so wild, free, counterculture and far from home.
As we leave, I head directly for the trees at the edge of the parking lot, on the south end by the highway. I have always, in the twenty years I've lived here, thought this little woods was beautiful. I wanted to see them close up before I went east to exit.
"This is also how I play GTA,"I told Mike. "I just head for the wild edges, outside the border of how you would normally be expected to play the game."
Waterloo
It was raining finely, misting. I needed my poncho otherwise in time I would be soaked. I turned east, took the Spur Line Trail down to the crosswalk at Wilhelm, cycled past George Lippert Park and further down the trail. Traffic wasn't so heavy on Wellington this early in the morning, so it wasn't hard to get across. A car stopped for me, unexpectedly. Drivers are developing new relationships with bike paths.
Such an habitual route for me. East again on Breithaupt, a pang of anxiety as I reach what is still an edge, after all these years. No matter. Today I cross Margaret, anxiety increasing, and follow Breithaupt down to St. Leger. I feel real anxiety now, and I'm staying with it. My body is ramping up, but my mind is focused. The plan is to come back west on Wellington, since I haven't been on that stretch going west on a bike in a while. I bike through dirt parking lot and think about my pants getting dirty. No matter. Back up to Margaret, and then east on Louisa. Today is the day I'm going up St. Vincent on the big hill. My stomach tightens, I gear up.
I'm parallel processing a relationship issue with a friend, trying to make sense of why our friendship failed. It's something that happens for me when I'm leaving my zone; thinking about things I don't always ponder in my day to day. I'm trying to feel my feelings, and then I cross that zone line, and suddenly all I want to do is forgive and love. This is my brain in survival mode, though I like this - agoraphobia makes me cut right to the chase of what will make me most happy and peaceful in life, even if in my day to day I tend to brood and escalate. Fear can bring clarity on what is most nourishing, and in this way, it is very useful.
I round the corner, and see the hill ahead. My mind tells me this is a terrible idea, that I will become a sweaty, miserable mess with my soul howling in a sort of quiet, early morning, misty-rained hellscape. I think, I can call Mike, if I need to (I always think this). But my training continues to operate, and I'm steady. I smile at woman walking her dog. There are often people doing the most mundane things alongside my extreme sport.
I need to get off my bike, as expected. It's a bit of climb up the hill. I look down, I look up. When I look down, I ruminate. I accept. I look up, and I'm just a normal person. Been here many times, with the car. Just a normal place. Up and down, but not so much. Mostly just looking around now.
At the top of the hill I turn right (further outside the zone) because now I'm a world adventurer with much less fear. Hill Street has the most charming architecture and a view to the horizon over the factories. I love this tiny street. I bravely continue on rather than turn around, onto Lancaster, past the giant skeleton that lives on the corner all year round. Still weird. On down Lancaster, past an old guy sitting with his work tools on a lawn, probably waiting for his morning ride. He's smoking and pulls back to give me room.
Just prior to this I see a little flag, it reads, "When a cardinal is near, an angel appears". Because I'm moving and I can't quite read the words easily, I get OCD (yeah, I have that now too) and feel compelled to return to look at the flag. But a) I'm committing to not doing that and b) I don't want to go past the old guy again. So I keep going, cross Lancaster on that cute little crosswalk (everything about this little fifties retail area is adorable) and decide to finally take a look at a secret park I've meant to find for about a year, since my friend told me about it.
I though I'd come a block too far, but no, there is an entrance on this side too. I'm really anxious about the cardinal sign. People have told me they consider seeing a cardinal as seeing a passed loved ones spirit. This fills me with anxiety. I persist down the path and stop at the entrance to the park. It's medium sized, misty, with Scots Pine and a blurry background of trees I would just describe as 'green and leafy'. There is an older stone wall to my left and a small playground a little further on.
I can hear the highway. I stand quietly, feeling anxiety and vibes, the vibes of rain in the morning with the sound of cars in the distance, the edge of fall coming in. Balancing the pleasure of feeling lost with the fear of it. A small strawberry plan pushing up on a wall. Dampness. Green. Smell of rain.
After a few minutes of really being there, feeling the anxiety and staying, its time to go. Maybe I go because of anxiety - I am sure I do, because if I didn't have anxiety, I think, I'd keep going and not come back for hours. But, I'm also damp and hot/cold as one is in summer when it rains. Anyway, it's ok.
Back on Lancaster I can't cross due to busier traffic and feel a brush of panic but my calmness kicks in as I cycle towards the lights at Union. Calming down about getting to the lights but still pretty anxious about the cardinal sign, and it mingles with agoraphobia to create a somewhat novel, monstrous hybrid of religious/death/OCD anxiety and fear of travelling. I can see this should be nipped quickly in the bud. I can't go back and check, so I don't. I keep going. Off Union I turn onto a sideroad and a path that goes along the highway. My anxiety is pretty strong. Unusually, for being back relatively in my zone. I borderline delight in it; well, I appreciate it. Feeling so anxious like this in my zone gives me opportunity truly accept it; when I'm leaving my zone I have more uncertainty in general, and it's harder to really say, I am here, since, well, I have more choice about leaving, since I have a safe place to go to. But in my zone, I have safer places, but only on a spectrum of safety, not the more black and white experience of zone exit. Thus, an opportunity to feel fear more deeply and healingly in a safer space. But no so safe that I'm not forced to feel and cope.
This feeling grows as I decide to enter Breithaupt Park. I've had that here before though - those big hills, they take strength and courage, since they are all so high with long paths up! I really do feel uncertain but the training is there for me, so I enter and persevere. It's really beautiful in here, but the highway is loud. It feels more distressing than I've ever experienced it, which is normally, not distressing at all. I'm okay though. Soon I'll be away from it, deeper into the park. The climb is an effort, even on foot, but soon I'm at the top of the hill. I turn north to go the longer way out. So brave! I get lost, or, misdirected, which is frankly exceptional in a location I've been coming to regularly for 20 years, but the woods have grown so much and at this time of year, they are so full, it all looks different. Will I panic? No. I do not! I emerge in a familiar spot and bike down the hill. I say hello to my tree friends, the Black Walnuts at the bottom of the hill. Should I go a bit further north? No, it's time to get home to meet the contractor coming to give a quote on fixing the foundations of our home. I too am building a strong foundation.
London
https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/ycayxo/timeslip_premonition_or_something_else_russell/
