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A cartoon depiction of the author, wearing a hoodie and smiling motd.co

Livejournal Refugee: Don't Look Down

I’m rescuing this post from my Livejournal. It was originally written in 2009, while I was working in downtown Chicago for a year and half.

There’s a conference room on the outside edge of the floor I work on. The outside wall has a large window that runs across the length of the room and starts ~4 feet up. On one of the walls perpendicular to the window there is a large whiteboard which runs all the way up to the corner where it meets the window. Whoever mounted the little marker-and-eraser holder decided to do so right up against the edge, so while I was retrieving a marker today I was standing right next to the window and just happened to be looking down onto the street 62 floors below. When I pulled out the marker that I wanted, I accidentally knocked the eraser out of the little caddy, and I panicked as I saw in my mind the eraser falling down, down, down 62 floors to the street below. Then I remembered that I was still inside a room and leaned over to pick up the eraser, trying to make my heart stop beating wildly as I had imagined my body falling after the eraser.

So yeah, I’m still a little bit afraid of heights.