130. WHAT FRIGHTENS ME , by G.P.C (E.S.O 3)

SONG: Janelle Monae - We Are Young

Since I was a kid I have had many illogical fears. The most strange ones were probably my fear to hairdryers and my fear to a toy called Gusiluz, which moved and made noise.

Although these fears disappeared as I was growing up, new ones took form around me, caused by different situations that I lived.

I became afraid of  being alone at home and being indoors…

In one way or another, I finally overcame these fears, although I still feel a bit nervous when I’m alone at home or when my hair gets tangled up with the hairdryer…

But there is a fear that I have never been able to get over completely: my fear to elevators.

It appeared after a visit to my aunt.

Four years ago, on a summer holiday, I was going with my mother to visit my aunt, who lives on a third floor.

We took the lift to get up there.

We were inside it, waiting for the first and second floors to pass, hearing the annoying music of the elevator, lit with the faint lights inside it…

Suddenly, it stopped. The lights turned off and the music finished. We couldn’t see anything. We were trapped inside the lift, left in the dark.

We waited, but nothing happened. I started to get nervous. We shouted, but nobody heard us. I got frightened.

Although we knew that nobody could hear us, we continued shouting and making noise.

After a while we realised that we were really trapped in the lift.

I became hysterical. I started breathing hard and trembling with fear.

My mother said to me: “Don’t worry, it must be a power outage. We just need to wait until the electricity comes back”. But these words didn’t calm me at all.

We waited in the dark seconds, minutes, hours…

In reality, we waited just half an hour, but it was the longest half an hour of my life.

Finally the electricity returned, and we arrived at my aunt’s flat as if nothing had happened.

However, I could never forget that experience.

After it, I became scared of elevators. I couldn’t get inside elevators, and I always walked downstairs or upstairs when I entered and left a building, no matter the floor I needed to go to.

Two years ago, I started using lifts again, but each time I enter one, I feel very nervous and a little bit afraid as I remember the half an hour that I remained inside the elevator that day.