I’m not afraid of heights

I’m not afraid of heights.

Not really.

But.

Sometimes I get nervous when I’m standing next to cliffs, or on the roofs of buildings, or near windows, or on tall rocks, or after I’ve climbed onto the shoulders of a very tall person.

Not because I think I’m going to fall (except if it’s a very fidgety tall person), but because some part of me, some little itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me still doesn’t quite believe that I can’t fly.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me remembers being a kid and climbing up onto my dresser, and imagining really hard what it would feel like to go flying down the hall and out the door and past the dog and over the fish ponds and the creek and EVEN over the hill and the race car track. Maybe even to Australia.

And that itsy-bitsy, very unscientific, very not-so-good at self-preservation part of me suspects, even though this is obviously not true, that the biggest reason I never actually managed to completely destroy the rules of physics was that I always put pillows on the floor for my inevitable fall. So of course I landed on them.

But I’m not really afraid of heights. I’m afraid of my lack of fear of heights and that that temptation to launch myself out into space will eventually just be too strong, but then on the other hand WHEN I’M DIVE-BOMBING PIGEONS I’LL BE THE ONE LAUGHING, ASSHOLES.

…

I think if you pretend that this is an extended metaphor for art or something, I sound less alarmingly unhinged.