OLIVER MUSOVIK
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
OLIVER MUSOVIK
Hypsiphobia, 1999 The first time I became aware of my fear of heights hypsiphobia, I was 16 years old and I was searching for my Montenegrin roots. With my parents I went to visit the mausoleum of the great Montenegrin writer and statesman Petar Petrović Njegoš, located on one of the peaks of Montenego´s highest mountain Lovćen. We parked the car at the foot of the mountain and climbed on foot to the mausoleum, which can only be reached by stairs through a tunnel. The tunnel ends about 30 meters before the mausoleum; those 30 meters are in fact a path on the mountain crest not wider than 2 meters, without fence, mildly ascending to the mausoleum. From the sides of the path the mountain is a steep slope ending in an abyss. When I looked down, I was overcome by great fear, I was petrified, and I couldn’t move. I stood numbly, not daring to make a step forward. My mother and my father supported me from both sides and dragged me to the mausoleum, like a wounded person. There they gave me a glass of water to drink and told me to pull myself together, which I guess I did. Later we visited Njegoš ´s grave, but I could not think of anything else but the fact that I would have to walk back that path one more time. On the way back, my parents and I went through the same “first aid” procedure. My parents were really cool about it, they didn’t tease me, and since then have hardly mentioned the incident, but for me it was one of the most shameful moments of my life, and since then I tend to do as little climbing as possible (of anything!). Hypsiphobia A morbid fear of high places. In psychoanalysis the fear of heights may represent fear of punishment for forbidden wishes or impulses. Also called acrophobia or height phobia. |