Travel panic

For the last five mornings, no matter what time I've gone to bed, I've woken up between 4.30 and 5 am with the most horrible stomach ache. I've cut out wine, I've eaten lightly, poached egg on toast for dinner, yet still it keeps happening. Waking after five hours' sleep, bad tum, trips to the loo... It's cleared up by lunchtime but I've felt aching and exhausted for the rest of the day. Last night I went to bed at 9.30 pm and took half a sleeping pill - but I still woke before 5 and still had the painful guts.

I have been thinking that perhaps my IBS has returned in a new form. But this morning, after I'd taken a mug of tea back to bed at 5.30, I suddenly started thinking about tomorrow, when I am heading up to the Lake District to see my sister. My neck and shoulders are really stiff and sore at the moment - I keep getting tension headaches - and as I imagined myself dragging my wheely case on and off the tube, up the flight of steps in Euston Square tube station, along the road to Euston Mainline, I could feel myself tensing up even more, and my stomach roiling.

Now I'm thinking perhaps it's not IBS at all, but my travel phobia striking again.

But why? My sister is always off to different parts of the globe. Once, as soon as I got back from a holiday, while still the the airport I was looking at Departure boards and wondering how soon I could be off again. Now, at the thought of booking a holiday, my guts writhe and I feel sick. Why? What has happened to me over the last ten years or so that has made me feel such a panic about going anywhere?

I wonder if it all stems from the bomb attacks on the London tube? I was on one of the tubes two weeks after the main attack, that had one of the bombs on it that didn't go off. I was sitting right opposite the bomber, a young Muslim man with a rucksack. I kept wondering why he had such a strange expression on his face, his eyes rolled up as if he were praying. I got off the station before the bomb was supposed to go off, but the idea I was on that train was utterly terrifying. I was so close... Too close. God, I'm feeling ill again as I write this.

But this only one factor. A couple of months after Mr Grumpy had his brain haemorrhage in 2000, I was booked to go away with a friend to stay with another friend who lived in Turkey. I had also just moved house and was already realising I'd made a big mistake and the house was wrong for me (horrid neighbours, a big dark tree outside where drug-taking youths congregated, a steep hill to climb in order to get to shops and transport). I had a throat infection, I was tired and stressed and told my friend I couldn't go.

I was hardly letting her down. She had somewhere to stay, she had friends out there and yet another friend was going to the same resort three days later. But she turned on me, spat vitriol and refused to refund me for her air fare (£200, if I recall) which I'd put on my card. In fact she said to a mutual acquaintance, "Hydra must be doing really badly if she needs that money." About ten months later, I received a cheque in an envelope with no note, and that was only after friends had put pressure on her to pay up. Needless to say, we are no longer in touch.

Since then, I have only been abroad once, a most unpleasant week spent mainly in the Spanish equivalent of Ikea as the person I went with was just moving into a flat on the Costa Del Sol. The sun was shining, the beach looked lovely, but there was no time to relax.

In the last two or three years, I have missed two trips to see out of town friends, two funerals and a wedding. I made it to two other funerals, of my last remaining aunt and uncle, but only because I had a lift rather than having to go on my own.

Ah, maybe I have hit something now. It's those words, 'on my own'. Perhaps if I had someone to travel with, to jolly me along and soothe my nerves, to drive to the station or airport with so I didn't have to strain my bad back lifting luggage, it would all feel a lot better.

But that doesn't help me tomorrow. I still have to drag my case to Euston and get on a train, no matter how awful I'm feeling. I'm going for a massage this morning, then off to North London and back, two hours each way. And I've still got to pack, as I've put all the wrong things in my case.

It's my biggest fear that I'm getting like my mum, who, the older she got, the less she went out, until she flatly refused to go anywhere unfamiliar, which ruled out holidays, of course. Could I be suffering from a form of genetic agoraphobia? Or is it all just stress? Or a combination? Mr G makes it worse by saying, "There's no chance of you going. You know that. You'll ring your sister in the morning and tell her you're not coming." Which just makes me feel even worse, of course.

Wish I could just stay under the duvet.