Sursumdeorsumphobia

     By the title of this weeks blog you can guess that I am writing about a phobia or a fear that I have.  The first part of the word may seem a bit confusing.  In Latin, sursum means up and deorsum means down.  So together sursumderosumphobia means fear of traveling up and down.  In layman's terms I have a fear of elevators. 

     I am not afraid of heights.  In fact I love traveling in an airplane (although my last airplane ride was in the spring of 1996 to Las Vegas) and seeing how beautiful the world appears in a bird's eye view.  I can look over a tall hilly landscape and be mesmerized by the surrounding view.  I am not afraid of tight, closed-in spaces.  I don't seem to mind it in a bit.  However elevators, after so many floors, makes my heart race, my breath to cease, and my head to spin. 

     I can probably trace my fear back to elementary school where in reading class we had to read SRA (Science Research Associates) stories that were color coded to our reading level.  My reading level was in a rose colored section which meant I was an average reader.  We would have to read so many stories, like 15 or 20, and answer questions about the story, then we could move up to the next color and set of stories.  This one particular story had to deal with an elevator operator who died when his elevator plunged down some skyscraper killing him.  On the eve of the anniversary of his death the ghost of the elevator operator reappears and recreating the tragic event.  Sometimes he takes victims with him in his recreated event.  People can hear the screams and the sound of the elevator swooshing through the vertical corridor as it makes its way to the bottom.  I must of been in the first or second grade when I read this and it scared the daylights out of me.  The hand drawn picture that was on my SRA story card was spooky enough.  Chills ran up and down my spine and I read it.  I don't think it was the ghost part of the story that scared me.  It was the realization at such a tender age that elevators, and their cables, could break causing the elevator to soar to the bottom of the building.  Thankfully I didn't have to go into elevator's that much. 

     Now I can handle going into an elevator one or two floors with no problem.  I figure I have a better chance of survival from a lower height in case something does go wrong.  Also, being closer to the ground if the elevator does plummet it would be a shorter fall time-wise.  I probably won't have time to think about what just had happened.  If I am 20+ stories high then I am going to have a moment to think, "Oh crap!  I am falling to my death in a tin box!"  I wouldn't want my last thoughts to be like that.

     I never realized how bad my fear was until my senior class trip in high school.  We went to Chicago and visited the Sears Tower, or what is now called the Willis Tower.  It was the tallest building in the world from 1973 to 1998.  It beat out the first World Trade Tower and was finally surpassed by the Petronas Twin Towers.  The observation deck in on the 103rd floor of the building.  An elevator can go from the ground floor to the 103rd floor in around a minute time.  It is so fast that people can feel the pressure change as they go up. 

     Outside of the building I remember looking up, straight up, to see the height of where we were going.  If I am ascending to the near the top of the tower in 60 seconds then how quickly would I be descending if the cables broke?  How strong are the cables?  Are the cables getting overused and worn down and going to snap during my rise to the top?  These thoughts flooded my mind. 

     Our teacher ushered us inside and made our way through the zigzag of ropes and video stations of how the Sears Tower was made.  Watching that only strengthened my fear.  We neared the elevators.  A fear like I had never known swept across me.  I begged my teacher for me to stay back.  He wouldn't let me.  I was forced to go.  I tried not to make a huge scene as I pleaded with the teacher that I could not do this.  He didn't care.  He couldn't let a student stay behind.  I understand his point of view but how I wished there was an adult that would have stayed back with me.  Several of my classmates and I crowded into an elevator.  The doors shut.  My eyes closed.  I was near the side wall holding on to a railing.  I had to remind myself to exhale slowly.  I could feel the elevator starting to rise.  The other students were having fun whooping it up with the feeling.  Some thought it was fun trying to jump in the elevator.  I could feel the elevator starting to sway and shake a bit.  I couldn't tell if it was from the students or if it is was normal for the elevator to move like that.  I crouched down on the ground still holding onto the bar for dear life.  I started screaming, "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!  I WANT TO GET OFF!"  Tears started to trickle down my face.  I didn't care anymore about not making a scene.  I was beyond petrified.   Finally the elevator stopped.  I couldn't breathe.  The elevator moved down slightly to adjust itself.  When I felt that downward motion I believed that the elevator was ready to make its way careening downward and I was preparing myself to be lifted off the ground due to the fall.  I did manage to find enough to breath to shout out, "WHY DID WE STOP?  WHAT'S GOING ON?  WHAT'S WRONG?!"

     The doors opened.  The students happily made their way out of the elevator and onto the observation deck.  I literally crawled on my hands and knees out of the elevator.  I was so happy to be out of the can of death.  My legs were so numb and weak they couldn't support me.  I crawled my way to a bench and pulled myself up to a sitting position.  I sat there for a moment while my body regained feeling and I was able to breathe again. 

     The view was stunning.  On all sides of the  building we could see forever.  While looking around the different windows my eyes kept shifting around looking for an exit with a stair sign.  I couldn't get truly comfortable because I knew we would have to be going back down the elevator.  DOWN!  I even asked the teacher if I could take the stairs and he laughed and said the stairs don't go that high.  I didn't know whether to believe him or not and he probably thought I was joking.  I really wasn't joking.  I needed those stairs.  I really didn't think my body would let me enter the elevator again. 

     The time passed to quickly and we had to enter the elevator.  I found my position against the wall snuggling up against the bar that wrapped around the elevator.  I knew if the elevator were to fall nothing, not even the bar, was going to save me yet grabbing it gave me a sense of control.  Like normal students they had their fun jumping up and down as we descended towards the bottom.  I scrunched down towards the bottom of the elevator murmuring under my breath, "Please, God, Please, God. Please, God!"  Finally we were at ground level and the doors opened.  I was so happy to be out of there. 

     About two years later my husband and I took a trip to Chicago with our infant son.  Brian wanted to go up the Sears Tower.  I didn't think I could do it again but I told myself I am a mom and I need to find the strength to go up to the top with my husband and son.  It took every ounce of prayer to get me to the top but we did it.  I was numb from doing it and my husband realized how much of a fear I have with elevators.  We went back just after the birth of our third child in 2000.  Brian wanted to go back up the tower but I physically couldn't handle doing that again.  The fearless mommy superpower that I thought all mother obtained somehow passed me by.  I was able to do it with my first born but as I got older I think the fear grew more inside of me and I could not do it. 

     One time my mother treated her children and in-laws out to a fancy restaurant in Grand Rapids.  I am not exactly sure where we were at but we took one elevator upwards to view the lights of Grand Rapids.  I was a little nervous going up high but I knew it wasn't like the Sears Tower.  Going down we took a different set of elevators.  This elevator had glass on the outside so you could fully see outside.  I totally freaked out demanding that the elevator stopped and that I needed to get off.  My family never knew this fear in me before and was totally shocked by my behavior, especially sense I was a grown woman.  I apologized for my behavior when we reached the bottom as I didn't even expect to react the way that I did.  It just happened.  I had no control over the fear I was facing. 

     Last year when my mother-in-law passed away she was up on the seventh floor of the hospital.  My husband asked me if I was able to handle it or if I would rather take the stairs.  I wanted to take the stairs but time was our enemy and we had to reach the seventh floor quickly.  I entered the elevator and took a deep breath.  My husband would try to crack a joke to help calm me down and relax me.  Mentally I would try to displace where I was at and not think about the elevator cables breaking and the elevator falling to the bottom.  Maybe it was the realization that I was in a hospital and if anything were to happen to the elevator that would probably be the best place for it to happen especially with medical staff being right there. 

     Elevator accidents do happen.  The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries reports about 20 deaths per year related to elevators.  Most deaths that do occur are mostly due to maintenance workers working on the elevators or careless reckless errors due to elevator riders. 
The link below recaps 10 terrible elevator accidents.  Perhaps after reading some you may find yourself suffering a bit from sursumdeorsumphobia.
http://listverse.com/2011/12/23/10-tragic-elevator-accidents/
     

Amityville Slaughter House

     I do not know why men think women are dainty creatures that needs protecting.  Perhaps some women do faint at the sight of blood or scream at the sight of a snake crawling across the floor but not me.  I was raised with the enjoyment of blood, guts, and gore.  While some girls I knew found gratification of looking at clothes and jewerly, I was finding pleasure in horror movies and getting down and dirty.  As a child my sister and I would watch the movie series Friday the 13th and our VCR had a slow motion button to it.  There was a scene where a cop ran through the woods trying to chase Jason Voorheis.  The cop came to a small run-down cabin.  He is looking through some things when Jason comes up behind him and slams the hammer claw into the back of the cops head.  My sister and I would click the slow motion button and watch how the cops eyes would look as if are popping out of his face once the hammer was entering the back of his head.  Morbid, I know, but my sister and I were laughing too hard to care.  My family is twisted.

     I was only dating Brian a few weeks when he asked if I wanted to join him in the semi-truck to make a pick up in Chicago.  It sounded exciting and it was.  Sitting up high in the semi-truck you can see everything.  You felt powerful and tall.  In Chicago traffic you can look down into people's cars and see what they are doing or little children will look up and beg for the air horn to be blown.  Sometimes Brian would blow it and the kids in the car would hoot with delight. 

     He was scheduled to pick up meat from a slaughterhouse in Chicago.  It was called the Amityville Slaughter House and it lived up to its name.  He told me to wait in the cab as he went inside to deal with the paperwork.  I looked around through the cab's windows and there wasn't much to look at.  Older looking cars were in the parking lot, weeds vined up the broken down fence that surrounded the building, and the building looked old.  I even watched a pig being escorted in the air by a Bobcat 4-wheeler across the parking lot.  Little did this pig know but its final ride would lead him become bacon and ham. Did my mouth just water, I thought.

     After a while an uncomforting feeling came across me.  I needed a bathroom.  Oh how I envied men who can just stand hidden in a corner to use it or relieve themselves in a bottle or jug.  God just did not make women that way.  I looked at the mulitple doors to the building.  I didn't know which door to go into.  I looked around for another business, perhaps a gas station would be nearby.  There was nothing but old, run-downed, two story homes.  Please God, let Brian come out soon! I anguished.  After what seemed like forever Brian came back to the truck to check on me.  The shippers were still messing with the paperwork.  I told him I needed to use the bathroom.  He asked if I could hold it.  I have him a look of urgency.  He begged me to hold it because this wasn't a nice place to use the bathroom.  "I don't care," I pleaded, "I am about to squat in front of this truck if I don't get to a bathroom now!"

     He comes around the truck and opens the door for me.  "I don't want you looking around.  Keep your eyes on the floor.  There is disgusting things in here." he says tenderly as we approach a set of doors.

     Disgusting things?  Did that ever get my curiousity going!  We entered the first set of doors and a lady sat behind a window with papers shuffled across her desk.  Brian asked where the bathroom was for me.  The lady gave him instruction through the factory maze. We entered another set of doors.  It was loud and smelled nasty.  As we rounded a corner the floor turned red.  It's wasn't paint either.  But I was mindful and still kept my eyes on the ground, mostly because I didn't want to step on the chunks that was litered on the ground. We entered another area and he told me that when he says "GO!" we have to move quickly forward.  I couldn't look down any longer.  The urge to look up was too great.  I told Brian I can handle this.  I looked up and gasped out loud.  Brian was so concerned and disappointed that the image I seen was terrifing to me.  On the contrary that was a gasp of excitment. 

     This is a part of our food chain that most people don't get to see and here I was observing it.  Up above were skinless headless pigs hanging on hooks through its feet cascading around on a system that looked like a cruel roller coaster ride.  It went from an upper level and down across the room we were in and into a lower level room for more processing.  As we passed through the room, we had to dodge between the hanging pig corpses.  It was thrilling.  A smile even emerged from my face which confused Brian.

     We went down a flight of grated stairs.  I placed my hands on the railing.  It was sticky and gooie feeling.  I knew it was because of pig blood.  I quickly let go of the railing.  Just because I found this experience interesting I didn't want to feel it.  We finally found the bathroom.  It wasn't pretty, to say the least.  It looked as bad as it did the slaughter house.  I didn't care.  I had to use it.  A toilet was a toilet and I was thankful.

     We made our way back up the sticky stairs, dodged the hanging carcas of pork, and back around to the lady at the window.  Brian walked me back to the truck apologizing for the sights that I seen and that a lady shouldn't of seen something to that degree.  I told him I found it rather interested and I liked it but he didn't understand how someone could like something so grusome.  I climbed back into the truck and Brian went back inside to finish up on the paperwork.  I sat there wishing how I could see the rest of the factory and how a pig goes from being carried on bobcat to becoming bacon on our breakfast plates.

     After some time Brian comes running to the truck.  "We have to go now!" he says urgently, "The inspectors are closing the factory down!  They just finished loading our truck and we have to leave before they lock up the gates."  He gets the truck moving fast and starts shifting gears.  A few other trucks were in line of leaving the premises quickly.

     We get back on the road and Brian says, "I bet after that you won't want to eat meat anymore."

     I looked at him, smiled, and replied, "Actually a grilled ham and cheese sandwich does sound good."  Then we rode off on the highway.  I think Brian then realized that I was different than the other girls he knew.