My work have a thing for newly qualified staff visiting other sites, to see how they function and to get a feel for the wider company.
One of these sites is around about 250 miles from me, and it’s where one of my managers (of a sort) works.
I’ve been invited to go and visit her workplace, and stay in a hotel.
I know it sounds silly, but I’m terrified.
Almost 30 years ago I did that same train route (I guess these things don’t change, although we were going from top of Scotland to bottom of England whereas at least now I live halfway between the two), with my mum and my (at the time) baby sister for a planned ‘holiday’. I was about 5 and a half. I was caring for my mum who was mentally ill, though I did not know it then and it felt normal to me.
There was abuse at home between my parents, and I remember my mum being terrified while we were away because she knew would get beaten once we got home.
I don’t remember much of the journey down, but on the way back up my mum collapsed, in a city I didn’t know. She had a seizure type episode due to stress. She was taken to a hospital I didn’t know. My sister and I went into foster care.
I remember a lot of that very vividly. I remember the train stopping. I remember the other people around me. I remember what I felt. I can remember the hospital. The foster home.
My dad picked my sister and I up, drove us 500 odd miles to my grandparents. Several days later my mum managed to make her way up the country, I don’t remember how. I don’t remember knowing if or when she would come home.
My dad drove us home from my grandparents, in silence - that journey was about 2 hours. Dropped us off on the street, told me he didn’t love my mum. Gone. I saw him less than 10 times in the next 21 years. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I forget it was a very, very long time ago. I blocked a lot out for a long time and then a lot came back in therapy.
I haven’t been that far south since that time. My mum couldn’t afford holidays when I was growing up, didn’t have the strength to travel, and to be honest neither have I ever been able to afford it, but now I’ve got a good job where they’re offering to pay for travel... I could do the journey but in my head I feel like I’m 5 again. If I think about planning it, I clam up. It’s the fact that they would keep reeling off that list of stations whilst travelling.
I can’t tell my work. They don’t know anything about my childhood. And how would I start? ‘I might struggle go to x city because the idea terrifies me?’, they’d probably rightly be a bit irritated. I have CPTSD but it’s very well controlled right now and I can’t cope with the thought of triggering myself in a strange city with no one I know anywhere near.
I’m not having therapy just now, and I do want to try to do this but I don’t know how to get rid of the fear, and remind myself that I’m not 5, I don’t have to be scared anymore, I’m 33 with an important job and confidence.
am I being as stupid as I feel?