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A phobia (from the Greek: φόβος, phóbos, fear or morbid fear), is an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. When the fear is beyond one's control, and if the fear is interfering with daily life, then a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made.

The phone problem has escalated, in a sense; it took me a week to be able to handle a couple of calls about storing my stuff, and it has definitely gotten to the point of interfering with my life. Long past that, actully — always before it's been family, who are frustrated by my reluctance to pick up when they call or check my voicemail, but now it is costing me money and energy and this is not okay.

I just don't know how to fix it. No one in my life seems to understand that when I say I would rather have had oral surgery than make these phone calls, I am not joking; oral surgery involves sedatives and the pain from it (the once I have had it, admittedly) is simple and localized and easily dealt with. girlpearl gets it, I think, and copperbadge too, but it's hard to explain to my family, who seem to think it is a preference, or that I'm just avoidant. It is humilating to be twenty-two and to call my mother and ask her to make the arrangements for me to store my stuff, and my mother is almost the best person I have. My sister would be even better, but — I don't know, I am all kinds of jumbled about that relationship; I spent years trying to protect her from our father, and it turns out that she might not have needed it because she isn't affected by him in the same way I am, and now we can't talk about it, there are these huge elisions and gaps in our conversations, I love her more than I can express in words and yet I am a little afraid of her, I do not want to make her my caretaker, but I want to know I trust her completely, I want to be able to talk to her but I don't want to make her uncomfortable...

But at least I have been sleeping better the past few nights; the environment in which I sleep is becoming steadily more important as I grow older, especially when it comes to falling asleep and waking up. I need natural light to wake up, I need quiet and a firm mattress to sleep. My mental list of things that are non-negotiable for where I make my home (I swear to god, when I finish my degree(s), I am buying a fucking home and never moving again) is increasing. Which I suppose is good: self-knowledge is never wasted.

The only problematic thing about my next few weeks, which I am looking forward to a lot, is that they are another two weeks living out of a suitcase. I hate doing that so much — I am good at it, but I hate it, and it is not an ideal way to end the summer before the semester starts; early semester stuff is stressful for me, and I wish I could go into it rested and focused and without longing washing through my veins.

One thing I want to talk to my mother about, when I spend the last week of the summer with her, is a kind of three-year plan — I have two years of my undergrad degree left, and I want to think about getting an apartment my senior year. Moving this constantly is honestly just not good for me, and I bet that I could talk either D or G or S into sharing with me, maybe more than one, which would alleviate a lot of concerns, including financial and social. So I want to at least broach the topic.

Speaking of topics to broach, the last two sessions of therapy were mostly about the thing for which I do not use nouns; no conclusion has been reached, but it is really interesting that after the first discussion, I was expecting a flood of emotions and upset and that did not happen at all. Apparently my subconscious is not troubled by talking about this at all. And when Dr. L asks me questions, no matter how probing, my face just lights up, she says. So I am mostly sure that I will have the courage to go after it when it becomes more possible. Which is pretty much now. It still scares me, but oh god do I want it.

And now to do my damnedest to fix the mess the phone phobia has created.