A Therapeutic Trip Home

This past weekend was a very important weekend for me psychologically. For the first time since July 2009, my wife and I went to New Jersey to friends and family. This was a major event in both of our lives.

The trip, which usually takes 4 – 5 hours, wound up taking close to 12 hours. It was not even an issue of traffic that slowed us down so much. There was some  traffic, but nothing to the magnitude of delaying us 7 hours.

We delayed getting started, and getting up there with so many little things. The biggest part of the problem was anxiety. We were both anxious and afraid on some level. I even brought my Xanax with me, fully expecting at least one of us to need it.

Why so much anxiety? Why had we not been to New Jersey in so long? The answer to both is the same, on July 3, 2009 my wife and I had a very severe accident that almost cost her her life. That accident was in New Jersey, on our way to see the friends we were on our way to visit this time, for another party, at the same house.

This trip gave us both a chance to face some of the demons that haunted and tormented us for the last few years. It gave us a chance to face these fears and hopefully put the fears to rest once and for all. I know I needed this trip to go well.

Not only did the trip go smoothly from a traveling point of view, but it was a lot of fun as well.