Last night around 9:45, I was in the kitchen reading a magazine, and L had just gotten home from a concert. She got a drink in the kitchen, and then she was standing in the dining room when she turned to me and said “I just saw someone on our fire escape, at our door.”
“What?” I said. Unless they know us, nobody comes up to the secluded door on our fire escape, which is the only entrance to our place. And nobody ever just drops by.
“I saw someone standing at the door – I saw jeans, and then they turned around and left when I saw them. Then I heard the fire escape shake on their way down,” L explained.
My first thought was something along the lines of “How strange. Oh well.” But then I started to think about it. And L was freaked out, which fed my tendency to freak out. My legs started to shake.
Why would someone come up to our door and not knock? To our door, mind you. Not to the top of the stairs, only to realize they’d made a mistake, were looking for someone else’s back-alley up-a-fire-escape apartment. No note. Nothing.
And L had just gotten home. Had someone followed her? Why?
And why would someone come all the way up to the top of the fire escape at 9:45 at night when all the lights were on? Surely someone with nefarious purposes would wait until the middle of the night. But that’s a cold comfort. Were they casing the joint? Just curious? Maybe someone with no awareness of social boundaries, wondering what the apartment in the back looked like?
L and I cautiously went downstairs to our neighbor’s place and asked him if maybe one of his friends mistakenly came to our place instead. He said no, he and his girlfriend were the only ones home.
Despite the rickety entrance to our apartment, we’ve always felt secure there because it was so hidden. Nobody knows we’re back there unless we tell them. At least, that’s what we thought.
We barricaded entrances last night before bed. I actually booby-trapped my bedroom door. Slept with a blunt object within reach under my pillow. Overreaction? Probably. But goddamn it, I was freaked out. I didn’t sleep very well.
Why did someone come to our door last night and not make their presence known? What would they have done if they hadn’t seen L’s shadow through the window? Who the fuck are they?
I have a lot to do in the next week. Four stories to write for work, a temp to train, many items to pack. I need my brain to be fully functioning. But right now it’s incredibly fuzzy from lack of sleep, and I am so prone to anxiety that I don’t think I will be able to relax in my apartment between now and Moving Day. I don’t really know what to do.
I’m beyond on-edge. I hear people come into my office and I’m alert like a cat. Wondering what they want. What is it in my brain that thinks everyone is out to get me? I make eye contact with someone on my street and wonder if they’ve been watching L and me. Is it the lack of sleep that is making me extra-paranoid?
I would just like to relax. I would like peace in my heart. I would like not to think that I have lung cancer just because I get wheezy after a jog. I would like not to assume that the mole on my stomach is on its way to basal cell carcinoma. I didn’t used to get paranoid about sickness – why is my anxiety manifesting itself there now? Have I exhausted all other options?
L didn’t imagine someone on our fire escape, though. Do I finally have something real to be anxious about? That’s a little terrifying. What do I do?
