Real high.

I am in the midst of a self-induced panic attack! It's all about fear of heights.

I work high up. Real high. 28th floor. Normally, I am able to sort of abstract it enough that I don't feel too bad, unless I get close to the window.

I sometime go into the stairwell to get some exercise, but I usually walk down. If I come back up it's only for 10 or so flights before I give up in exhaustion.

Today, I decided I'd go up instead. Get the hard part over with first and then I could cool off going back down to my floor. I thought it only went up to the 33rd floor. Thought that was the top. I was wrong-o.

Actually, almost straight away I felt weird. I thought, "Hmmmm, I'm really getting more of a sense of how high up I am.Hmmmm."

Suddenly I felt like the camera angle changed in my perception and Alfred Hitchcock took over control. I looked down (always a mistake) and realized that there was nothing below but more concrete, suspended staircases, held up by...? Sheer will? If one of those stairs landings fail, man, the whole thing is gonna collapse in a real big, real long way down sort of thing. This fear was not quelled by the fact there was a huge vertical crack on every landing where rail connected to the wall.

Partially horrified and partially thrilled by the dare factor, I kept going. It didn't help that as I started looking in the windows of the stairwell doors, all the floors were empty. Nothing and no one. I kept going anyway, freaking more at each landing.

There are these bright red pipes with metal boxes and dials running up the corner of every stairwell and, for some reason, as Hitchcock handed the direction over to David Lynch, the pipes got louder and more hissy and more urgent sounding, the higher I went.

At the 32nd floor I figured, hell, only one more to go however, at the top of 33- more stairs. Then more and more. Dammit, they just kept going! I was in total, adrenalin, spazz-out frame of mind by then, grasping the railing with both hands, feeling like I was past the point of no return. Suddenly, an end.

The obsessive-compulsive in me dictated that I walk to the very end of the top landing into what I thought was the corner of a dead stop. Not so my friend, just a door behind a wall to another fucking stairwell.

4 more bloody flights and another door at what looked like the top. I go in and take my boot off and wedge it in the door so it doesn't lock behind me, because guess what folks, I'm at the fucking roof. The very tippy-toe, pointy-topped roof where the next door to go through goes nowhere but outside. If the first door closed behind me, I'd have been stuck in a 2 foot corridor with nowhere to go but 38 stories up in the open air.

Godammit, I had to try the next door and thank christ on a cracker, it was locked. Who knows what my obsessive-compulsive self would have willed me to do after reaching the top. Peek over the edge? Throw something off? See if I could fly? There was a sign saying the area was monitored by a camera. I'm sure it looked interesting to anyone who may have been watching me.


On the plus side, I made it up 10 floors without the slightest trouble being so cranked on adrenalin. I ran down 10 floors even faster to get back to my desk. The world has only just now, stopped spinning.

Ah, the adventures of office working.