Me & me

Every place I go, things are open and sun-lit. As you can imagine, I've had some problems with the stairs, the many different ways they seem designed to defy gravity--concrete slabs suspended in open cages of metal. I can't go near them. I spend a little time every place asking about the elevators. Elias asked me what it's like to be so irrationally afraid of something. At the time, I couldn't answer him because I had my eyes shut tight and was occupied with holding onto the car for dear life as we drove across the top of the national park. But today as I stood near the open staircase in the parking garage, getting my pass for the day, and I realized I both could not reach the buttons and could not will myself to move closer, I realized what it means to me. To me, it's a regular and yet unexpected reminder that I'm not always a unified whole, that there is both the rational mind and the animal brain and body. Almost always, we never have to be aware of this, because the mind is in control of conscious thought and the brain just chugs away in the background keeping the heart beating and the lungs inflating and the temperature regulated. The brain has a level of consciousness, I think, but devoted to the primal things--try to fuck that; no, that feels bad; yes, that feels good; oh, scary; ooo, fun; go pee, etc.--and since most of the time the rational mind and the animal brain work in concert to keep you up and moving around, you can convince yourself quite thoroughly that there's just some singular "I." But say the animal you are is terrified of something the rational mind is only afraid of--in my case, heights. It's not unreasonable to be a little afraid of heights. You could fall. That's true. But the overwhelming likelihood is that you won't. So, rationally, you approach an edge or an open staircase and you say "Okay, be a little more aware" and that's the end of it. And, internally, I do the same thing. But the other part of my brain is not having it. "No, oh god, no!" it screams as if we are already falling and as much as I'm like "Get a grip, B., you are fucking fine," the rest of me does not get the message, can't hear it over the beating of my heart and the dizziness and the sweating. And I think that's what really terrifies me--not just what's going on externally, but internally. I don't, in those moments, trust myself. I don't know what I might do, because the body isn't taking orders from the part of me I recognize as me.