I'm Deb. I'm forty-five, I live in a split-level south of Cleveland with a cat named Lucy, and since the winter of 1996 I have had panic disorder with agoraphobia, which is the long way of saying I don't leave the house much. What I do instead: watch television, talk to my sister, talk to my therapist on the phone every Tuesday at two, and lately, practice. The shows keep me company. The steps are mine.

Sunday, 9/26/99

Saturday I paid for Friday. Tired all day, jumpy, and I jumped a foot when the ice maker dropped its ice. Dr. Weiss warned me about that: after a big step, your body sends you a bill. I paid it on the couch with Lucy and a blanket.

Saturday night there was a new show about high school kids in 1980, the smart ones and the burnouts, and I laughed out loud. I was an awkward teenager out in the world once. I had forgotten there was a time when being in public was only the regular kind of miserable.

Today Maureen came over after church and we sat on the front porch steps with iced tea. Porch steps are easy now. Can you believe I'm typing that? She said, "So what's next? The drugstore?" I said, "Let me enjoy the corner for a week." She said, "Fair." In three and a half years my sister has never once said the words "just try." I don't think I've ever told her what that means. Maybe she reads this.

Paxil, week thirteen. Less yawning. Mornings are better.

A woman in Oregon who hasn't left her apartment in two years wrote to say that after reading about my mailbox, she walked down to hers. That is the best thing that has ever come in my mailbox. Thank you, all of you who write.

Friday, 9/24/99

I went to the corner.

Maureen came at ten like she said. She didn't make a big deal. She just stood at the bottom of the driveway in her sneakers and her Indians jacket and waited.

The corner is four houses away. I know them all from the window. The Nowaks' with the hedge. The blue one with the basketball hoop. The one that's been for sale since June. Then the stop sign.

At the Nowaks' hedge my heart started going like the Millionaire music, and my hands went cold, and every cell in my body said, go home. I stopped. Maureen stopped. She didn't pull me and she didn't say anything. I did the breathing, in for four, out for six, and I looked very hard at one leaf on that hedge until I came down from a ten to a seven.

Then we kept going.

I touched the stop sign. I don't know why. Like base in a game of tag. From the corner you can see all the way down to the main road, and there were cars going by, and a man walking a beagle, and a school bus, and the whole ordinary world going about its Friday like it wasn't a miracle. We stood there for a minute. Maybe two.

I walked back faster than I walked there. Inside, I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried, and then, at eleven in the morning, I made popcorn. Maureen ate half. She said, "You know that's only about a hundred yards." I said, "I know exactly how far it is."

Thursday, 9/23/99

Two premieres in two nights.

Last night: The West Wing, the new one about the people who work for the President. Everybody in it walks very fast down hallways while talking, and every one of them is smarter than me, and they all look like they haven't slept since the Carter administration, and I loved it. I taped it and watched the last ten minutes twice.

Tonight: Friends came back for season six and picked up right where they left off in May, and I was so glad to see them all that I laughed at things before they were even funny. Lucy left the room.

Tomorrow at ten, Maureen and I try for the corner. So far I've told her, Dr. Weiss, Lucy, and now you. Wish me luck.

Friday, 9/17/99

Dr. Weiss's homework this week: stand at the end of the driveway. Five minutes. Nothing in your hands.

People think that's the same as the mailbox. It isn't. The mailbox has a purpose. You grab the mail and get back inside, and your brain lets you do it because you're on an errand. Standing at the end of the driveway for no reason means standing out in the open where anybody can see you, with nothing to hold.

I did it today at four. I set the kitchen timer and put it in my sweater pocket. Lucy watched from the front window with her tail going. The first minute was terrible. In the second minute Mrs. Dudek across the street came out and waved and yelled "DEBBIE! YOU LOOK WONDERFUL!" which I could have done without. Minutes three and four I looked at the Nowaks' maple, which is just starting to turn at the top, and I thought, I haven't seen a tree turn from outside since 1995.

The timer went off in my pocket and I jumped a mile. Then I went in and sat on the stairs and laughed like a lunatic. Five minutes!

Sunday, 9/12/99

The Browns came back today.

If you're not from here: Cleveland had a football team for fifty years, and after the 1995 season it was moved to Baltimore, and for three seasons we had nothing. Now there's a new team with the old name and a brand-new stadium on the lake, and today was the first game. It was 43 to nothing. Pittsburgh. Of all people.

Here's what I thought about in the fourth quarter. The Browns and I both went away in 1996. They came back first. Fine. They had a whole stadium built for them. I have a kitchen timer and a sister.

I flipped over to the Emmys during the worst of it, which may be the first time in history the Emmys were the less painful choice. Maureen's husband Dennis called just to say, "Well, at least we have a team to be miserable about again." That's Cleveland. We missed being miserable together.

Sunday, 8/29/99

Millionaire ended tonight. Two weeks, just about every night, and now it's gone until November and I feel like a friend moved to Arizona.

Also, I have news. I walked to the mailbox. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

For three years our mail carrier, Pat, who is a saint, has walked the mail up to the porch for me and left it in the milk box. On Tuesday, with Dr. Weiss's blessing and the cordless phone in my pocket like a leash, I walked down the driveway at 1:30 and opened the box myself. Forty-one steps. I counted. Inside: the gas bill, a seed catalog, and a coupon for pizza. The most beautiful mail I have ever received.

Tuesday was a nine out of ten, scary-wise. Thursday, a seven. Saturday, a six, and I pulled a weed on the way back. Today there's no mail, so I walked down and opened the empty box on principle.

Tomorrow I'm writing Pat a note to say she can stop. I hope she knows what she did for me.

Tuesday, 8/17/99

There is a new quiz show on ABC called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, on almost every night for two weeks, and I am in love. Regis Philbin, the lights go down, and the music goes thump, thump, thump like a heartbeat.

That music is exactly what a panic attack sounds like from the inside. I found that weirdly comforting. Somebody else's heart pounding on national television, for once.

You get three lifelines: 50:50, Ask the Audience, and Phone-a-Friend. I would be the best Phone-a-Friend in America. I'm always home. I pick up on the first ring. I know who was in The Sound of Music.

Maureen called during the show last night and I shushed my own sister. She said it's the first time in three years she's heard me yell at the TV in a happy way.

Wednesday, 8/4/99

Groceries came today. Stan brings them from the little market on Pearl Road that still takes orders over the phone. He's seventy, has forearms like Popeye, calls me "young lady," and puts the milk in the refrigerator himself. I tip him five dollars and a cold Coke.

Status report, for anyone new: I'm good in the house. I'm good on the porch, which took most of last winter. The porch steps are "maybe." Past that is "no." Dr. Weiss says now that the Paxil has had a few weeks to settle in, we're going to start working on "no."

Paxil, week five: sleepy, yawning, a little queasy in the mornings, and something I can't name yet, like somebody turned the volume on everything down one notch. Including the scared.

Lucy, named for Lucille Ball, sends her regards. She is an indoor cat. We have that in common.

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