In Case of Fire, Please Use Stairs
Often, at the top of a staircase, I get the intrusive thought, or rather the feeling, that I have no idea how to descend a staircase. Oh no, I think, I am going to fall down!
Recently I have been thinking Oh no, I am going to fall down! while descending the stairs, carrying my son. I bought some very cheap slippers from Temu and they gradually stretched to the point that they no longer really encase my feet at all and wearing these slippers that don’t fit my feet has increased the frequency to which I think Oh no, I am going to fall down! while descending the stairs.
The reason that I bought such cheap slippers is that I was trying to replace a pair of pale blue Japanese linen slippers that somebody kindly bought for me and they were very expensive but they didn’t last very long, and when the blue linen had worn through I could see that inside them was just yellow foam! I didn’t like to see that yellow foam, like a burst sofa cushion! Maybe all slippers are the same, I surmised, and I should just buy this pair that cost £4 and have the words SWEET HONEY SIMPLE FASION [sic] sewn onto them.
When the baby was younger I would rock him in the dark in the corner of the room and I would think Oh no, I am going to rock his head straight into the wall!
Sometimes, when walking a little too quickly down the road with him in the carrier I would think Oh no, I am going to fall down and CRUSH THE BABY AGAINST THE PAVEMENT.
Intrusive thoughts are normal. I asked people to tell me theirs and these are just some of the intrusive thoughts that people told me they have:
What if I suddenly fell into my kitchen worktop and smashed my teeth out
What if I deliberately impale myself when I’m just like cutting carrots
Whenever I hold a glass I’m like ‘I’m going to smash it and maybe all the other glasses too’
Cycling past bollard what if I smashed all my teeth on bollard
I want to drive into incoming traffic
I’m going to fall on the track on the underground
Convinced I will get spikes in eyes when getting things out of sideboard the cactus lives on
I’ll forget how to walk properly and go cowboy legged while out among people
I’m going to fall off the train platform, I’m going to fall off the stairs into basement area
You don’t deserve nice things
Throw your laptop in the bath
I have been eating with my mouth open my whole life but never noticed
Somebody also told me that once, when they were a kid, they looked at the Arsenal top they were wearing and wondered what would happen if they cut a hole in it and then they did cut a hole in it and then they were very sad because their top had a hole in it. This is the kind of intrusive thought I can relate to the most because the segue from ‘what if?’ to ‘oh no’ in life is often so swift!
I was reminded by this anecdote that when I was a kid I found a baby jumper of mine, and I thought to myself I am going to wear this jumper, even though the jumper was much, much too small, because it was for a baby. And I tried to put on the jumper and obviously I got stuck inside the jumper and I thought if someone finds me like this they will think that I am completely insane, and that is one of my clearest childhood memories.
I think that intrusive thoughts get worse after having a baby because your animal brain is newly awoken and constantly scanning for danger to the point that it glitches and tells you that peril exists where there is none. I know that this is what anxiety is too. Your heart beats like this: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have new slippers now, because I told my boyfriend about my intrusive thought and I guess he was like hmm, I think this woman is telling me that she is going to fall down the stairs holding our baby, and he bought me a pair. I am less frightened of falling down the stairs now I have slippers that fit, but I will never be 100% convinced that I know how to do it. If I am faced with a spiral staircase I have been known to descend it one step at a time, on my bottom, which is mortifying, but what would you have me do? Die?