Irrational Fear

My biggest fear is hardly supernatural (though I am also much too frightened by the supernatural as well) and happens to pop up a bit too much for my liking. You see, I am afraid of heights. Some people might try to be  smart and just say that they're afraid of hitting the ground more so than of the height itself, but I feel my fear is better described as a fear of heights. Now, if my fear was rational then it would make sense to say that it's a fear of hitting the ground; however, there's hardly a rational thought in my fear, hence my preference for "fear of heights". I can't even remember when it started, and one of my earlier memories is of me in Kindergarten staring down the firefighter pole on the playgound, wanting so badly to go down it and prove that I could, but being much to scared to even attempt it. I did, eventually, go down it, but that was after several months of this and with my Kindergarten teacher standing at the bottom, hovering over me as I went down.

It's not just something that happened when I was little. I still get jumpy around heights, and when we drive home to visit my family or to visit my hometown and we must go through the towering Smokies, I look out over the landscape with both fear and awe (I mean, I realize that it's pretty. I'm just hoping my dad doesn't go around a curve just a wee bit too fast.) Within the past few year (I can't remember what year exactly, just that it was over Spring Break) my family and I went on a trip to Red River Gorge. It was terrifying. For someone who both hates walking too much and heights, it was truly the worst. For it became a routine; walk for three quarters of a mile so that I could have a panic attack on the side of a cliff, then walk the three quarters back and then do it all over again somewhere else. I broke into tears and curled into a ball at one, and at another I had to lay down on my back in the middle of the trail while my family scrambled around the peak and walked over the creaky stairs up to one specific peak. My mom still has pictures of me huddled in a ball at one point where I just stopped hiking and let my family go on while I watched them. I played in the dirt and tried not to think about how high I was or where we were.

As one can see, it's really just an irrational fear. While some people can track their fear to one specific part of their life, one instance which started it, I can't for the life of me remember what might have caused it. I have my suspicions that it might have been something my dad did, but other than that I can't really figure it out. Though I doubt that would really help me, in the end.