Don't Fence Me In (From The Argus)

Don't Fence Me In

6:23pm Tuesday 13th September 2011

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By Alice Wright - Reluctant Housewife »

I recently travelled by tube. I took London ’s famous underground train from Victoria to Oxford Circus, only a couple of stops with no changes. No big deal you might think? Well maybe not for you but I haven’t travelled by tube for over ten years! Which is odd considering up until recently I had lived in our nation’s capital for the better part of two decades. No, I don’t have a problem with transport in general, I am claustrophobic.

Like most with a fear of enclosed spaces its not the size of the space that’s really the problem, nor the stuffiness, the lighting, or the proximity to my fellow man. No it’s the taking away of my liberty, as a self-confessed control freak not being able to get out of a situation under my own steam and into the open air is a desperate problem. A previously innocent travelling train or ascending lift immediately becomes a living coffin for me if it grinds to an unexpected halt with the doors shut. At least on a packed bus stuck in traffic you could force the doors open and get outside if you had to.

It wasn’t always this way, for my first few years living in London I happily zoomed around the city using the underground, from meeting to party to home and back out again the morning. Lifts, planes and MRI scanners never even crossed my mind as items to fear. Then suddenly things started happening… we had a temperamental lift at work that kept stopping between floors, we all laughed about it and didn’t really think too much of it, waiting for someone to come and rescue us by giving the door a whack as they passed by. (Our office manager used to do yoga when she was trapped, the mirror backdrop turning the small space into a handy studio). But I got caught a couple of times in one week, once when I really needed to be somewhere, and then the same week was held captive on the tube for nearly half an hour with a terrible hangover. These three events in the space of a few days seemed to conspire into some kind of phobic perfect storm that rendered me unable to pass through a button-activated sliding door unless I could see the way out. Suddenly I was unable to sit happily on a tube reading my book or enter a lift without imagining being incarcerated and helpless. I started getting breathless, hot, panicky, unable to speak and experiencing terrible palpitations. Soon, I was taking the bus and getting cabs everywhere rather than walk down those long steps facing into the hot wind that comes rushing up like from the very bowels of hell (told you it was bad).

Colleagues sighed when we went to visit clients on the 8th floor as they pressed into the lift and I started up the fire escape, new boyfriends looked at me askance as I explained that although yes I was great fun and a super-duper cool girl, no I was unable to get the tube across town to a do.

Years this went on for, years, I have spent a fortune on cab fares and got massive calves because of my phobia. I’ve had to walk from Earls Court to Hammersmith after a gig by myself in the middle of the night, in December, in the pouring rain wearing only a cashmere wrap (ruined) because I couldn’t get on the last tube with everyone else and there were no cabs (it was nearly Christmas). I once even got trapped on a hospital roof because I took some fire stairs rather than brave the lift and found myself unable to get back into the main building, I set off an alarm trying to break in and had to be rescued by security guards who laughed themselves stupid.

Foreign travel has been a nightmare, a trip to Paris nearly ruined because I had to fly while everyone else went on Eurostar and I never made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower because of the small enclosures when we got there. (For some reason flying hasn’t been too much of a chore, I can cope with about seven hours because at least you’re constantly moving and can look out of the window). The Empire State Building with its incredibly fast elevators and unexpectedly small viewing platform was like a trial rather than a treat and the underwater treasure of Bermuda is lost to me because I am unable to strap anything to my face and have something beyond my control in control of my breathing (who enjoys that really?).

So what’s happened? How was I able to take a journey underground recently. Well, its been gradual but there is nothing like having a child to see off any phobia, predilection or peccadillo you might be proudly sporting. Because suddenly the world is not about you anymore, you’re usually so concerned about keeping your baby alive you kind of forget anything else you’re meant to be scared of. But mainly because you can’t use the stairs when you are pushing a massive buggy. You can try to use the escalator, and I often did despite being chased around by security guards (holding onto the descending pushchair for dear life and imagining myself on the news later being described as an irresponsible parent because we crashed to the floor causing ourselves and everyone around us untold injuries) but if you and baby want to go upstairs you’re going to have to use the lift I’m afraid.

So, on baby’s first Christmas shopping trip I was in HMV on Oxford Street, the gifts I needed were upstairs, the escalators weren’t working and instead of weepily trudging home decided to get hold of myself and go for it. I told a guy working the shop-floor that I had a phobia and would he come up in the lift with us, of course he agreed but only in a bemused kind of way to see how crazily I would act after the doors closed and he pushed the button remarking ‘these lifts can be a bit dodgy’. Thanks mate, you might as well have locked me in the stationery cupboard. My stomach sank to the floor as we went higher.

But I realised that if baby and I were going to get anything done I was going to have to grow up and suck it up. And besides I didn’t want him seeing me start to shake every time the up-arrow button went ‘ping’, my phobia wasn’t going to become his. So despite the sweaty palms I smile calmly and hop into the lift focussing on him the whole journey. We now travel by lift a lot even though we gave up the pushchair over a year ago! He loves it, I keep my own counsel.

And so how did I cope with my short two-stop tube journey a couple of weeks ago? Well, I went with my husband who thinks it’s high time I released my inner-captive, but who held my hand the whole way. I sweated, my heart beat a bit faster, I was glad to get off, but I managed it. Maybe I’ll do it again, the kid’s going to want to go to the zoo one day…

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