The Night I Stopped Letting Fear Decide

The police tape was still there when I went back. I had come into Blackfriars Station, which sits on a bridge over the Thames, and from the platform I could look along the river towards London Bridge. A couple of days earlier I had been standing on that bridge, taking photographs. Now there was tape, and flowers, and a version of myself I had not expected to meet.

The years I stopped leaving the house

For a few years I changed into someone else, against my will. I had travelled fairly regularly, including a solo trip from my home in the UK to the USA. Then I became someone who felt too anxious to leave the house most days. Travel was off the table, even though I had wanted it as much as anything since childhood.

I can date the change almost precisely. I had booked another solo trip to the US, this time around Arizona and Utah, when work turned bad. My boss was a bully. She had already forced several members of the team out by making their lives unbearable, seemingly for no reason beyond her own enjoyment, and eventually it was my turn.

With my confidence gone, anxiety that I had previously kept in check became all-consuming. I felt useless and worthless, and wanted the safety of my own house. I quit, hating that I had given my boss what she wanted, but unable to face another day of put-downs and tears on the way home. Already vulnerable and barely eating, I cancelled America a week before departure. The entire booking cost, £1500, was lost.

Looking back, my mind had decided travel was something I could no longer do. I was too anxious, too useless, and it was too dangerous. A large part of the cancellation was the 15-hour flight: I convinced myself I would get DVT, or that the plane would careen to the ground in flames first.

So for years I went nowhere. I loved the idea of travel, but accepted it as something that happened to other people.

A day at Borough Market

Things changed in June 2017, because of a horrific terrorist attack. A terrorist attack helped me overcome my anxiety; go figure.

On 3 June 2017 I spent the day with my boyfriend at Borough Market in London. We looked around the market, sampled fresh slices of bread and chutneys, and took photographs on London Bridge. That evening we planned to settle into Katzenjammers bierkeller to watch the Champions League final – I am a huge football fan, he is a huge German beer fan – and then go back to his place.

We changed our plans. After a full day in the area we went home to watch the match on television with a takeaway curry.

Almost as soon as we were through the door, a news bulletin reported a terrorist attack in London. Then came the detail: London Bridge, and the area around Borough Market. People had hidden beneath the tables in Katzenjammers. We had missed it by a couple of hours.

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What I saw from Blackfriars

My first reaction was shock and fear. I had to return to London a couple of days later, and my boyfriend escorted me through the Underground until I reached my station, because I was so frightened of something happening again.

At Blackfriars, on the bridge over the Thames, I looked back towards London Bridge. Police tape was still faintly visible, flapping in the breeze. Something in me changed again.

I did not want to be held back by fear any more. Most of the people who died had been travellers, out enjoying their lives before they were cut short. I felt I should follow their example and do what they could no longer do: chase the travel dreams and live in their memory.

So I booked a trip to Italy.

Getting on the plane

Returning to travel after years away is hard, and the anxiety does not vanish when you book. As departure approached I felt dread. I enrolled on an excellent travel anxiety course, which helped immeasurably; the night before I flew I sat in bed reading it, trying to settle my nerves.

At the airport I felt as though I was going to die. I forced myself through security and onto the plane, sat down with my phone gripped in clammy hands, ready to make goodbye calls to the people I loved if the worst happened.

Then the plane took off, rose above the clouds and let sunlight into the cabin. Everything from the course came back to me, and I breathed and relaxed. I was in travel mode again, which is the best form of mindfulness I know. When I travel I think about the present. I am not worrying about the future or turning over the past. And I was heading for Italy: culture, sunshine, barrels of gelato.

Sorrento, and a staircase I invented

My first day tested me. From Sorrento – a perfect base for the Naples and Amalfi Coast region – I bought a bus ticket to Positano. Buying it with my basic Italian was the first hurdle cleared.

I sat on the coast side of the bus, with the stomach-dropping views down to the sea and the rocks below, and did not freak out once. Second hurdle cleared.

In Positano I soaked up the sunshine and the glamorous views and congratulated myself on being a traveller again.

The trouble came when it was time to return. I was carrying a heavy camera, a heavier bag of lemon candies and not enough water. For some reason I had convinced myself that the only bus back to Sorrento left from a stop up an extremely steep flight of steps. It did not occur to me that buses generally run on roads, and that I could have walked along one of them. At the time, the steps did not look so bad.

Halfway up I decided they had been built to lure tourists to their doom. I half expected a cage door to slide open in one of the apartment buildings and a couple of hungry tigers to emerge. More realistically, I realised I was climbing one of the mountainsides that had looked so pretty from the beach. It was my only way back, even though it was curiously quiet, so I carried on, gasping in the hot midday sun.

Panic arrived. I sped up, desperate to know whether I was going the right way, which made everything worse. I was high enough for my ears to pop. Out of water, confused and panicking, I slumped in a doorway and thought my new life as a traveller might be a short one. I waited for the vultures and hoped the owners of the house would collect my remains.

Then I noticed the house. Houses are connected to roads. Roads.

I got up, controlled the panic and kept climbing. I asked a motorcyclist some exhausted questions – by then I had forgotten how to speak Italian – and found the road, then the bus stop. I also realised I could have caught the same bus down by the beach. Oh.

The important part was that I had beaten the anxiety. It had sunk its claws in, and I had not given in. It was a start.

READ: Italy Wonders: beautiful places to consider for your Italy vacations

Capri, and the defibrillator

A few days later I was on Capri. Another hot day: I needed a scarf around my neck to stop myself burning. I decided a hike was the best thing to do, to get away from the crowds, because Capri is a place of outstanding natural beauty. I found a trail marked on my map and it did not look too challenging.

At the start of the trail, attached to the sign, was a defibrillator for emergency use.

Previously that would have panicked me. I would probably have abandoned the walk at the thought of being dragged off the trail – obviously a death trap – and resuscitated with electric voltage. This time I did something that surprised me and made me quietly proud. I shrugged and carried on.

Doing something a little brave, something that presses the anxiety down, is addictive. It makes you want to push a little further. On that hike I inched out onto rocks overhanging the sea far below to get the photograph. I took lesser-used trails. I did not panic at another steep staircase; I climbed it more slowly than the steps at Positano. I explored a cave with a Roman shrine inside it. At the end I discovered I had done the trail the wrong way round, and that sensible people started where I finished so they did not have to climb the steps. Oh.

I am glad I did it backwards. It pushed me out of my comfort zone again and dispelled the new fear of staircases. I felt better equipped to beat the anxiety.

READ: Practical tips for travelling alone

The rest of the trip

Over the following days I met other things that made me anxious and conquered them. I took public transport to Herculaneum, which I had been advised against because of a risk of mugging; there were no problems and I enjoyed it. I went to Naples, the city everyone online seemed to be frightened of, and met no trouble. I chatted to Italians about football, in Italian. I went off the beaten path in Amalfi and dodged cars screeching around tight corners.

All of it confirmed that travel is what I want to do with my life, and that I would happily travel every day.

After I returned I booked and planned as many trips as I could, the first stepping stone towards becoming a true nomad. Beating the anxiety and using my time to travel has opened my world in ways I could not have imagined. I have seen things I never thought I would see, made friends I would never otherwise have met, and found a creative, cultured side of myself.

Travel really can change your life, if you let it.

Story by Nicky Cade from That Anxious Traveller. Connect with Nicky on Twitter: @thatanxiousblog and Facebook: thatanxioustraveller. Have a personal story to share? Write to me at admin@europediaries.net and share it in the Traveller's Tales series.

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