Fear Of Heights

I’ll Beat It…

Last week I was in Chicago. I was supposed to be on the 94th floor of the 100-story John Hacock Building. That didn’t happen. Even in lue of the Xanax I had borrowed. 2 months ago I was in Vegas. We were heading up this outdoor escalator to the 4th floor of this mall. I exited right before that escaltor and took the stairs. There was this immediate fear/panic like state my mind had gone into. My hands started to sweat profuosly almost instantaneously. Not normal sweating either, it was as if I was running them in the sink or something. There are about 3 other accounts of this on my trips to Chicago and Vegas. Why? Because I’m afraid of heights.

I think I’ve always been afraid of heights. I’m not really sure why though. They say you have an irrational fear of something because you had a bad experience with it in the past. Thinking back, there’s nothing that comes to mind.

Im afraid of three things in life, heights, spiders, and the dark. Spiders and the dark, I know why, the dark because of evil stuff that may or may not be lurking in there, and spiders, because they’re sneaky and they can kill you. But heights. Hmmmm. I don’t know. I was close to saying F*** it getting on the elevator, but I didn’t. It gets you from the bottom to the top in 39 seconds. Yours ears pop and everything from the sudden rise in elevation to a 1/4 mile up in the sky. I thought “I’ll get up to the 30th floor, then get off, get back on to the 60th, then to 94th. But the elevator didn’t run like that. So I just didn’t go through with it. In another bulding I went up to the 25th floor, and was getting a little scared as we entered the elevator, but I sucked it up and tried not to think about it too much. It wasn’t so bad. Probably because I wasn’t THAT high up.

Seriously though, I’d like to get over this fear of heights. I’m thinking of hitting this rather large hotel and trying the elevator thing, but it’s only 38 stories. Guess the next time I’m in a bigger city I’ll have to do it. I’ll beat it, eventually.