Welcome to the continuing story of claustrophobic me, and our new Airstream RV….
To get up to speed, you can read some of my earlier posts. But, here’s a very short recap.
– We bought an Airstream Motorhome.
– First night in it, I had a full-on claustrophobic panic attack.
– Next day, I met a man who told me to chew gum to relax. I bought gum and I bought sleeping pills
Now that you’re all caught up on the basics, I’ll continue with the true tale.
So, it was night #2, it was starting to get dark outside, and I was getting nervous. I was chewing a huge wad of gum per the stranger’s RX. I figured that it couldn’t hurt. But, I couldn’t chew gum all night, so I spit it out, and brushed my teeth. And I popped one those sleeping pills I’d bought earlier that day at the drugstore.
And finally, the inevitable….I crawled reluctantly into bed. As I lay face up, and looked around, I had a couple of really important epiphanies.
Listen carefully, because this is when this witty blog turns, briefly, into a real self-help tool.
1. I realized that Mark and I needed to switch sides of the bed. If I lay on the left side of the bed, the cabinets on that side were all low, and I could see over them. It made me feel like I had more space. The other side is the side with the bathroom, and hence, cabinets/doors that went floor to ceiling. So we switched sides. No big deal. Turns out we are both ambidextrous sleepers.
2. As soon as we closed all the privacy shades and curtains, my heart started pounding. Being visually closed in from the outside world triggered huge PANIC!! I realized that I had to sleep with most of the windows uncovered!! I had to see beyond the confines of the walls of the RV. I visually borrowed space from the outdoors and pretended there were no boundaries.
These were huge revelations for me, and that night I slept like a baby. (Could have been the sleeping pills!!)
Although these changes didn’t solve all of my claustrophobic problems, it was great progress. By the next morning, I was considering allowing Mark to fill the soap and shampoo dispensers! I saw that it just might be possible for us to keep the RV after all.
I was really proud of myself, and bragged all day about how resourceful I was and how I was pushing my own boundaries, and confronting my fears head-on.
In hindsight, I was a little too cocky, because that was not to be the end of my “issues.” Nope. They’d rear their ugly head again soon, during our trip to Palomar Mountain.
Stay tuned for the next installment!
Airstream Moho-A-Go-Go 