I’ve always been afraid of heights. I’ve had the strangest thoughts. My fears been with me since I was so small. Maybe that’s why my thoughts are so skewed, so really literal. I don’t think about falling. I think about losing my shoes. I think they fall off my feet and end up away from me. I’ll be up here and they’ll be way down there.It’s a silly thing. I know that. Still I worry about it, even now I do. Getting on airplanes, that little space of air, I look up and ahead, because I need my shoes. It’s the same way when I’m getting on elevators. Some of it is, I guess, I’m sure I’d manage to lose only one. Then folks would know, for sure, that I had made the mistake of getting too close to that little space, that space where the shaft of the elevator goes down to my doom.
Sitting on someone’s deck, I have the same problem there. I keep my feet and my shoes well tucked under me.
Yet now . . . something different is happening. I’m working on something exciting, inspiring. It's scary. I’m looking to find a place to stand out on a cliff, because I want to. I’m metaphorically looking to peer off a mountainside, testing all I have to reach for a dream. I’m actually asking myself to stand tall high in the sky. I’m challenging me to admit who I am.
It’s like standing on a precipice, knowing I haven’t quite found my feet.
What am I doing? Isn't this why I don’t like high unenclosed places? I don’t know what I might do if I lose my shoes.
Yet the feeling is lightness, freedom, and joy. Something is telling me when you fly, you don't need shoes.
−me strauss Letting me be
4 comments:
Shoes create fear. Heels fall off, straps break, they stretch but in all the wrong places, soles come loose and flop, some are tricky trippers, some slide up and down in the heel -- so strauss, if you must go to the very edge, or peek down the elevator shaft without fear, do it with bare feet. I find security when I clutch the edges with those ten shorter digits that I no longer use to count on and with my feet I can feel how far I can go without going too far.
Hi Ms. Roberta,
Thanks for sharing your bravery with me. Shoes indeed are scary parts of clothing. Who knows how we've gotten along with them for centuries. We really need to teach them how to be our friends and more supportive. Maybe I've been an old lady all of my life, in need of "comftable safe shoes." :)
"I don’t think about falling. I think about losing my shoes."
I really liked that phrase.
Take Care
Michael
Hi Michael,
I really like you.
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