Claustrophobia
2022 07 14
|
etc
no date
2024 +
2025
entries
home
I was earlier reminded that I'm ever so slightly claustrophobic in very specific circumstances - and I have yet to figure out where that stems from, other than an innate human fear response.
I was about to say that I was never entrapped, when it hit me that I actually was. I was in the elevator of our apartment building alone when I was coming home for lunch from school one day when I was five, when the hydro company decided that was a good time to shut the power in our building off. I don't remember how long I was in there, maybe 10 minutes, maybe half an hour? For years afterward, I would not get on an elevator alone, nor would I be first in or last out. I finally got over that one.
I was never afraid of the elevators themselves so much, but more the idea of being stuck in them alone.
But my claustrophobia is not related to that sort of entrapment. Mine is very specific to situations where one cannot escape from the entrapment - submarines, for example, the vessels that travel under the polar ice cap, spaceships, and mines. When I was eight or nine, I refused to go down into a mine that had been converted into a garden. The idea of being entrapped in something you can't just walk out of really disturbs me, enfears me. With mines, and the polar ice cap, it's that idea of thousands of tonnes of something over your head and the inability to just get out.
I don't know that the elevator incident is even related to this peculiar claustrophobia, but it's the only explanation I can come up with.