The A Side ✔

12- Travelling Alone

There comes that time when you stand face to face against the mirror and say, "I'm going to walk down this path alone." I think due to the lack of understanding with my Anxiety throughout school and college years, I did do things alone and not be like a social butterfly. As an only child, I did sometimes feel incredibly lonely while my various groups of friends all went out to the cinema for example and ended up having a really fun time. But that was the fear of the severity of my Anxiety being discovered and the biggest secrets out into the open.

As a student, my main focus was on my schoolwork and grades and never really on myself or on the present day in some aspects. My thoughts were either in the past during panic attack episodes or in the future dreaming about a grand old house where every room had a bookcase full to the brim of books and cats milling about the place. 

Group tasks in school and college were at frequent times difficult to handle. Everyone had different ideas about how to approach things and often led to disagreements but I had experienced a few times being completely dumped on my own and having to take on at least six different roles as a solo group member. Obviously, I got the grades and the others didn't. But I think the worst type of group activity was having to present something at the front of the classroom to your fellow peers. God, I hated doing that every single time.

With my Anxiety, doing presentations were far from ideal but during the five years at school plus two at college, I had to deal with that in a mature and sensible manner. Most of my fellow peers often took the mick out of the task at hand and that would send the room into fits of giggles and teachers barking out in frustration.

A lot of the time at college was spent being alone, I had friends and acquaintances that I could talk to without the fear of being completely rejected but the minute I mentioned anything to do with reading or writing, nine times out of ten, I would get ignored or have people physically walk away from me in a fit of giggles and whispering to their group of friends about how boring I was.

Let's set the scene, you walk along a busy corridor, past the various clusters of students until you arrive outside the classroom door, sweating and shaking because you are uncomfortable with the noise and the feels of multiple pairs of eyes staring down onto your back. Yes, there were moments when I felt incredibly sick. Seeing groups of girls carrying Primark shopping bags around and ranting about that episode of The Only Way is Essex. Oh heck, it was utter awkward. I never went clothes shopping with anyone other than my mum because we are close and she most of the time has great fashion advice but mainly, it is me on my own browsing through the rails and wishing that I was pretty enough to wear half of the clothes on display in the store.

I hardly ever try anything on in the shops alone, it's always with my mum or aunt but I have had the odd one or two moments when I pick an item of clothing off of the rail and on walking in the direction of the changing rooms, I always bump into someone who tries to mock me into putting the item of clothing back on the rail because I'm either too small or too babyish to wear it.

I never take public transport on my own except the local bus whenever I need to go into town let's say for a meet-up with my closet friends or going to some book events or the sales or whatever. The different groups of people that I've come across on public transport is creepy. Believe me when I say this: I've seen it all. The smokers, the half-naked, the young families. But you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with travelling alone...

Last month, I wrote down on my iPad a list of places that I wanted to visit on my own, some local and some quite far away. To get there travelling alone, I would need money and to get over my fear of public transport to places I don't know all that well. Paranoid about ending up lost in the middle of nowhere is not relaxing. I do tend now to stay at home because that is where I feel the most comfortable but this results in other effects such as a poor social life. Is it because of other experiences in the past? Most likely. Is it because I haven't met the right person/groups of people to spend time with? I think so.

I love being independent as an adult but overall, not completely settled with travelling alone. But as of right now, I don't really have a choice. Staying alone is where I will go.

I apologize for not updating on this, I have a number of reasons why including my notes going missing for nearly three months and problems away from Wattpad. But thank you all for your continued support, I really appreciate it. Scarlett x