Eicophobia

I am not a fearful person?
Mostly friends ask me if I thought through what I was doing because it seemed risky to them. I answer yes - I’ll go anywhere alone at night in any country, repel cliffs without a proper harness, ride a bicycle hundreds of miles with no helmet or light and dart through traffic using only my peripheral vision.

How surprising and messy it is then that I am the most fear-filled person of all.

Because I am persistently afraid of my home. Not of houses or your home.
Mine.
The home I live in.

It is not something I think about. I did not, riding the subway home this evening think, OH FUCK NOT HOME. Rather, I was looking forward to returning to some work and eating some frozen yogurt (vanilla).

I wish it was something I thought.

I push through my front door and put on my indoor flip-flop shoes. Slowly the burning ache in my back, gone for most of the evening, hums awake. I put away groceries. My eyes and temples begin to sink and grow with my heartbeat. I boil a kettle for tea and put away dishes. I have to stop for a minute and work hard to find a full breath.

What, I thought, do I do. Where, I wonder, do I go. Because anywhere I go, if I stay there long enough, becomes home.

And then I remember living in my car long ago as if it is some type of answer and not a cause.