So I deleted the story before I posted it, and began to realize that even though I’m 40, and should be past all this, it still hurts, and I’m a deeply broken person.
The thing about trauma (and it likely is trauma) is that it often just doesn’t go away on its own and you need to do work on it. So, why should you be over it?
Should is a loaded word as it pretty much always comes from what you learned as a child. You should do that. You should be like this.
That “should” probably comes from your father when he told you how you should be as a child.
It sounds like you aren’t over it now, but that’s ok. It’s ok not to be over stuff that happened in childhood. But the important thing to understand is that you can get over it with work. Being aware of that is the first step on that road.
It’s not necessarily how far things are, it’s that you need a car to get to places in a sensible way.
I’m a fellow Brit, but have stayed in suburban US enough to have experienced how different it is. You might have a supermarket a couple of miles away, but if you want to attempt to walk there, you’ll often be going well out of your way trying to find safe crossing points or even roads with paved sidewalks.
Train stations are mostly used for cargo in most US cities. If you don’t have a car, you’re pretty much screwed.
Some cities are different. NYC being the obvious one. You can get about there by public transport pretty easily in most places there. San Francisco is another city that is more doable without a car, but more difficult than NYC.
I stayed near Orlando not too long ago and there it’s just endless surburban housing with shops and malls dotted about mostly along the sides of main roads. You definitely need a car there.