My horrible fear of ...Stairs!
I am afraid of stairs. It's not a phobia, when seeing a flight of stairs I do not start screaming and smacking myself in the head. It's the fact that I have fallen down so many stairs in my life I've earned a healthy fear of them.
It seems to me I came out of the womb as tall as I am now. My mother will happily attest that this is not true, but to me it feels like it. I was always the tallest girl in my class and I always had the biggest feet. I've been a size 10 since birth, too (shut-up, mom).
As a tall, skinny, awkward kid always in a hurry I fell down a lot of stairs. Mostly at school when I had a throng of people behind me making me hurry. Not all falls resulted in public humiliation or bodily injury, but I had plenty of those in my life, too. When I lived at home with my parents in Illinois our basement stairs were painted with a super high glass paint. During the summer months our basement was constantly damp, turning those wooden stairs into little planks of slippery snot. I landed against the rough concrete walls on average about two times a week.
In 2003 a dear friend of mine fell down a long flight of stairs and it killed her.
So I have a very real fear of stairs. As such I have had to come up with ways to combat them. I count when I walk up or down stairs. There are 13 leading to our basement, at work one stairwell is comprised of 10 steps each flight while the other has 19. My father-in-law has 11 steps leading to his basement, my sister has 14 going up to her front door. Counting while going up lets me make sure I don't miss one on the way down. I also grab onto the handrail, some times with white knuckles, just in case I slip up. If there is no hand rail I lean against the wall or keep my hand on it while I walk. If there is no handrail, no wall, and nothing to grab onto should I fall, I avoid those stairs all together.
I found some paperwork in my box this afternoon that was very interesting. I had also found some left over chocolate cake. Cake in one hand, papers in another, elevator broken, I found myself halfway down the stairs before I realized I had no support system should I fall.
I froze. I literally could not move.
Then I proceeded to fall down the fucking stairs.
Self-fulfilling prophecy? Subconscious fear fully realized? I don't know, but it's stairs 1, Barbarian 0. And now I have to explain why the reprint my professor is sending a colleague smells like a birthday cake.
It seems to me I came out of the womb as tall as I am now. My mother will happily attest that this is not true, but to me it feels like it. I was always the tallest girl in my class and I always had the biggest feet. I've been a size 10 since birth, too (shut-up, mom).
As a tall, skinny, awkward kid always in a hurry I fell down a lot of stairs. Mostly at school when I had a throng of people behind me making me hurry. Not all falls resulted in public humiliation or bodily injury, but I had plenty of those in my life, too. When I lived at home with my parents in Illinois our basement stairs were painted with a super high glass paint. During the summer months our basement was constantly damp, turning those wooden stairs into little planks of slippery snot. I landed against the rough concrete walls on average about two times a week.
In 2003 a dear friend of mine fell down a long flight of stairs and it killed her.
So I have a very real fear of stairs. As such I have had to come up with ways to combat them. I count when I walk up or down stairs. There are 13 leading to our basement, at work one stairwell is comprised of 10 steps each flight while the other has 19. My father-in-law has 11 steps leading to his basement, my sister has 14 going up to her front door. Counting while going up lets me make sure I don't miss one on the way down. I also grab onto the handrail, some times with white knuckles, just in case I slip up. If there is no hand rail I lean against the wall or keep my hand on it while I walk. If there is no handrail, no wall, and nothing to grab onto should I fall, I avoid those stairs all together.
I found some paperwork in my box this afternoon that was very interesting. I had also found some left over chocolate cake. Cake in one hand, papers in another, elevator broken, I found myself halfway down the stairs before I realized I had no support system should I fall.
I froze. I literally could not move.
Then I proceeded to fall down the fucking stairs.
Self-fulfilling prophecy? Subconscious fear fully realized? I don't know, but it's stairs 1, Barbarian 0. And now I have to explain why the reprint my professor is sending a colleague smells like a birthday cake.
posted by Barbarian02003 | Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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