Another day another phobia

Few years ago, if someone had told me that agoraphobia was a thing, I probably would have laughed at their faces but here I am today, feeling like I've got the goddamn thing and I really don't know what to do about it.

_{Photo by Vadim Bogulov}

Today was one of those few days where I had woken up earlier than usual but immediately regretted it. I had woken up some few minutes past seven this morning and about ten minutes later, my phone rang. It was a call from my little brother who currently is staying with my aunt, the same aunt who has been asking me to come visit her for ages.

When I saw his call, I was a little bit surprised and concerned because he usually doesn't call that early. My interest got piqued when I answered the call and he asked me to call him back which I did. It turned out that another of my aunt was in town (in the house of the other aunt who has been asking me to visit) and she was the one who wanted to speak to me.

The call was a short one because all she did was ask me to come over to her sister's place because she wanted to talk to me face to face, which I agreed to.. Besides, it wasn't like I could say no, because the last thing I wanted was her going to the family's WhatsApp group to complain about me refusing to visit her and everyone being on my case and asking me why I've always preferred to be a one man army and all of that.

But you see, accepting to visit her was one thing, actually visiting her was another thing because I'm the kind of guy who rarely leaves home and always prefer to be at my comfort zone. I've known this for a while, I've even made a post about it, but what I didn't know was how leaving my house has slowly turned into a phobia for me.

It's currently 11:40pm as I write this and all I've done all day is mentally kick myself in the head for accepting to visit when I easily could have come up with an excuse not to leave my house. Unfortunately for me, it's too late to give any excuses now as that would result to me getting reported to my dad which to me is another phobia on its own.

I guess at the end of the day, the question that I have to ask myself is which phobia do I fear the most, that of going outside or that of my dad.