Scary
I had the vertigo dream last night.
I've not had it for ages - possibly even twenty years. I used to get it regularly when I was at school, and then less so when I went up to University. I can't remember the last time I had it.
I'm somewhere high up. It used to be climbing a particular mountain in the north of Scotland, Ben Klibreck, where I spent a lot of summers. It didn't look like Ben Klibreck, but in the logic of dreams I knew that's where I was. At the top of the mountain there were a series of narrow rocky chasms I had to cross, either to get to the top or, worse, to get back from the top where somehow I'd managed already to reach. (Ben Klibreck doesn't have these at the top, though it has a fairly spectacular cliff on one side - again the logic of dreams.) These chasms shouldn't present a problem, really. They're the sort of thing you could step over. Or at the very least leap with total confidence of making the other side. But in my dreams I am crippled with vertigo. Rooted to the spot with a fear so visceral it could induce a heart attack.
I suffer from vertigo in waking life as well. When I was a kid it was genuinely crippling. Even the thought of a sharp fall would make my legs turn to jelly. I could get dizzy in high-heeled shoes. There are too many incidents to mention where I was physically dragged, screaming in terror, along cliff paths or across narrow bridges over bottomless gorges. But as I grew older I learned to control the fear, if not actually embrace it.
I can go up to a cliff edge and look, carefully, down to see the puffins nesting below. I can climb trees when the inner child in me escapes and there are suitable specimens to conquer. I even managed the Sydney Harbour Bridge Walk, but in truth there's only one bit of that which is even remotely scary. I've flown gliders and been in a tight turn in my little brother's aeroplane when the door fell open.
But don't ask me to watch whilst someone else goes near the edge. A few years back, the Horse Doctor and I went bicycling around Orkney (well, it seemed a good idea at the time). We stayed for a while with a friend who was living in Stromness, and took the boat across to Hoy to go and look at the Old Man. I was fine up until the Horse Doctor strode up to the edge of the cliff, peered down and said 'look - puffins!' Inside I was a gibbering wreck, but I somehow managed to persuade her to come away.
Last summer on the great trip north I walked to the tip of Faraid Head with my parents and all our assorted dogs. But as we neared the spot where a stack is forming and the brave can step across a narrow gap onto the top of it, I had to turn back, and call the dogs with me. My mind was swamped with images of the DevilDog disappearing over the edge, tumbling hundreds of feet to the turbulent sea below, where I would be powerless to rescue him even if he did survive the fall.
Vertigo is a strange fear. It's difficult to describe to people who've never felt it. You're whole body goes into a cringe mode, pulling in on itself in a reflexive attempt to lower your centre of gravity. I've got an excellent sense of balance (which may, curiously, be linked to the vertigo), so it's very unlikely that I'll spontaneously fall over as I'm walking along a path near the edge of a cliff. But my brain doesn't trust me, and it swamps me with an unnerving fear. I remember it being so bad that at times I wanted to throw myself off the cliff - anything, even a painful death from deceleration trauma, had to be better than the torment of standing so close. It's a completely irrational feeling, and that's what makes it so powerful.
And that is my vertigo dream; trapped on the edge. Last night it was different - not Ben Klibreck any more. Instead I was up the hill here, at the viewpoint. Now there is a drop-off on one side of the track, but it's never bothered me before. In my dream though, it was covered in snow, which narrowed the track, pushing me closer and closer to the edge. I made it one way easily, then, inevitably, realised I had to come back. And suddenly there was nothing at all to stand on, no path, just an overhang of snow and an unseen but terminal drop.
For some reason there was a thick grey telephone cable buried in the snow, which I could hold onto as I inched my way along the tiniest of ledges, but it stretched as I put my weight on it, threatening to tip me over into the abyss.
And then the Horse Doctor thumped me because I was snoring. I was drenched in sweat, even though the bedroom wasn't particularly warm at half five in the morning. The first nightmare I've had in ages.
As I've typed this, I've recalled snippets of other fear dreams, some even vertigo ones, that I've had more recently than University. It's strange how once you start thinking about things the memories come seeping back. But none of those half-remembered dreams had the pure gut-wrenching punch of last night's. I've no idea what brought it on, either.
The Horse Doctor's away tonight; gone to Cambridge for a meeting of the company's ethics committee tomorrow morning. Who knows, without her there to wake me, this time I might even fall.
Puffins and a Seagull at Faraid Head. Honest.
I've not had it for ages - possibly even twenty years. I used to get it regularly when I was at school, and then less so when I went up to University. I can't remember the last time I had it.
I'm somewhere high up. It used to be climbing a particular mountain in the north of Scotland, Ben Klibreck, where I spent a lot of summers. It didn't look like Ben Klibreck, but in the logic of dreams I knew that's where I was. At the top of the mountain there were a series of narrow rocky chasms I had to cross, either to get to the top or, worse, to get back from the top where somehow I'd managed already to reach. (Ben Klibreck doesn't have these at the top, though it has a fairly spectacular cliff on one side - again the logic of dreams.) These chasms shouldn't present a problem, really. They're the sort of thing you could step over. Or at the very least leap with total confidence of making the other side. But in my dreams I am crippled with vertigo. Rooted to the spot with a fear so visceral it could induce a heart attack.
I suffer from vertigo in waking life as well. When I was a kid it was genuinely crippling. Even the thought of a sharp fall would make my legs turn to jelly. I could get dizzy in high-heeled shoes. There are too many incidents to mention where I was physically dragged, screaming in terror, along cliff paths or across narrow bridges over bottomless gorges. But as I grew older I learned to control the fear, if not actually embrace it.
I can go up to a cliff edge and look, carefully, down to see the puffins nesting below. I can climb trees when the inner child in me escapes and there are suitable specimens to conquer. I even managed the Sydney Harbour Bridge Walk, but in truth there's only one bit of that which is even remotely scary. I've flown gliders and been in a tight turn in my little brother's aeroplane when the door fell open.
But don't ask me to watch whilst someone else goes near the edge. A few years back, the Horse Doctor and I went bicycling around Orkney (well, it seemed a good idea at the time). We stayed for a while with a friend who was living in Stromness, and took the boat across to Hoy to go and look at the Old Man. I was fine up until the Horse Doctor strode up to the edge of the cliff, peered down and said 'look - puffins!' Inside I was a gibbering wreck, but I somehow managed to persuade her to come away.
Last summer on the great trip north I walked to the tip of Faraid Head with my parents and all our assorted dogs. But as we neared the spot where a stack is forming and the brave can step across a narrow gap onto the top of it, I had to turn back, and call the dogs with me. My mind was swamped with images of the DevilDog disappearing over the edge, tumbling hundreds of feet to the turbulent sea below, where I would be powerless to rescue him even if he did survive the fall.
Vertigo is a strange fear. It's difficult to describe to people who've never felt it. You're whole body goes into a cringe mode, pulling in on itself in a reflexive attempt to lower your centre of gravity. I've got an excellent sense of balance (which may, curiously, be linked to the vertigo), so it's very unlikely that I'll spontaneously fall over as I'm walking along a path near the edge of a cliff. But my brain doesn't trust me, and it swamps me with an unnerving fear. I remember it being so bad that at times I wanted to throw myself off the cliff - anything, even a painful death from deceleration trauma, had to be better than the torment of standing so close. It's a completely irrational feeling, and that's what makes it so powerful.
And that is my vertigo dream; trapped on the edge. Last night it was different - not Ben Klibreck any more. Instead I was up the hill here, at the viewpoint. Now there is a drop-off on one side of the track, but it's never bothered me before. In my dream though, it was covered in snow, which narrowed the track, pushing me closer and closer to the edge. I made it one way easily, then, inevitably, realised I had to come back. And suddenly there was nothing at all to stand on, no path, just an overhang of snow and an unseen but terminal drop.
For some reason there was a thick grey telephone cable buried in the snow, which I could hold onto as I inched my way along the tiniest of ledges, but it stretched as I put my weight on it, threatening to tip me over into the abyss.
And then the Horse Doctor thumped me because I was snoring. I was drenched in sweat, even though the bedroom wasn't particularly warm at half five in the morning. The first nightmare I've had in ages.
As I've typed this, I've recalled snippets of other fear dreams, some even vertigo ones, that I've had more recently than University. It's strange how once you start thinking about things the memories come seeping back. But none of those half-remembered dreams had the pure gut-wrenching punch of last night's. I've no idea what brought it on, either.
The Horse Doctor's away tonight; gone to Cambridge for a meeting of the company's ethics committee tomorrow morning. Who knows, without her there to wake me, this time I might even fall.
Puffins and a Seagull at Faraid Head. Honest. Click the picture to make it bigger if you don't believe me
Comments
I'm scared to death of heights and falling. And people who go near the edge of buildings and such just kill me.
I was looking at houses with a friend of mine this past weekend when it kicked in full throddle. These small twisty stairs in old trinity homes with no railings. I thought I was going to go down ass over tea kettle.