I've panicked about things before, trembling a little, feeling short of breath and a bit dizzy, it's inconvenient and a little scary. But not terrifying.
I can tell you what is terrifying...
Let me set the scene for you:
It's about 10.30 on Friday night in Paris, it's raining outside but you don't know that, you're curled up on the floor of Chateau D'Eau metro station hyperventilating, sobbing and shaking. Your eyes are closed because everything is spinning. Crowded round you are 20 other girls and several drunk and/or homeless French people and they're STARING. Kneeling next to you is a concerned yet very awkward language teacher. You wish they'd stop staring. You feel like you are going to die. Somebody puts their hand on your shoulder and you retch, in that moment you thank every God that you don't really believe in that you'd had the sense not to eat anything that day - there are very few things that could make this situation worse, one of them being throwing up.
Basically, it wasn't nice. It was traumatic and embarrassing and I'm finding it hard to write about it.
I've always been a little bit claustrophobic, but only a little bit. Underground trains in London don't bother me very much at all and I have honestly never been so frightened by anything before.
It started when we got on the metro after dinner, it was quite crowded and i was squished in the middle of a lot of people. It was uncomfortable and I began to shake, at every stop more and more people got on, there wasn't room for them but they kept getting on. It was awfully unpleasant, I was shaking quite a lot by this point. But then something else happened, two angry French people started shouting at each other quite close to where I was standing, the shouting turned to pushing the punching, they were having a full on fight and there really wasn't room for it. I was so squashed, I thought i was suffocating, everything was blurry, I could only hear people screaming and shouting and swearing in French. My legs gave way but we were so tightly packed into the stupid train that I didn't fall, I just stayed wedged between two people I didn't know. We were so close to our stop but someone had pressed the emergency button and we weren't going anywhere. I actually can't remember between then and when we reached the station and people began to move, someone (i later found out it was one of my friends) noticed me, grabbed me by my coat and dragged me out of the door where I fell onto the platform.
I don't know how long I sat there for, It could have been a very long time, It could have been just 5 minutes and I don't remember anything else until a lot later that evening.
It might not sound that bad to you but it was, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. We had to go on the metro what felt like a thousand other times over the weekend and it didn't get much better. Although I could mostly get over myself once we got out of the station and onto the street, I think I cried more times over the weekend that I ever have done before. One of the teachers told me I was really brave, I didn't feel brave, I felt stupid and irritated at myself for not being about to do something simple that everyone else could do so easily. I was so scared of throwing up that I didn't eat between Friday morning and Monday evening - I'm not sure if that made the situation better or worse, all I know is that I'll be very happy if I never go on the metro ever ever again.
It was one of those times where everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong for our relatively small group of 30 students and 3 teachers, we made this list:
- missing trains
- people forgetting passports
- people getting left behind at St Pancras
- delaying Eurostar
- lost luggage
- not enough hotel rooms booked
- breaking windows
- getting surrounded by scary men in an alleyway before the French teacher came and chased them away
- people getting lost on their own in Paris
- allergic reactions
- two people throwing up EVERYWHERE
- asthma attacks
- panic attacks *ahem*
- stolen money/phones
- one of the teachers stepping in unnatural amounts of dog poo
- lost metro tickets and passports
I think we were cursed. But I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the trip, because I really did, I made new friends and learnt so many new things, had opportunities to do things I'd never get to do or even think about doing otherwise. The teachers were supportive and caring and everyone was so lovely to everyone else, we all became so close and without the bad stuff it wouldn't have been nearly as funny and exciting and memorable. I don't regret going one bit, I loved all of it... well, most of it.
