Barophobia (prompt #57)

[meredevachon]

Title: Barophobia
Author: meredevachon
Fandom: Original fic (and I'm sure no one else would want to claim it)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1000 (10 connected drabbles)
A/N: Playing around with both structure and POV here. What can I say? This wasn’t the most straightforward of prompts.
Summary: Barophobia is a persistent, irrational fear of gravity.

~*~*~


Beneath my feet the world lies heavy, holding me down. A big, blue rock imprisoning me with invisible bonds I can’t see, can’t touch, but can feel all the same. How much more would it take to drag me down? How much to pull me under? Sometimes it feels like I’m drowning in gravity, like there’s some cosmic albatross stealing my life in drips and drops, slips and sags. And it doesn’t stop. Won’t stop. Oh, dear god, how much worse if it stopped! So I keep walking, one foot in front of the other, stooping more with each step.

~*~*~

An apple fell on Newton’s head, and what just was up to that point was named and tamed and made into unbreakable law. What gave him the right? Everyone knew what goes up must come down. Nobody needed science or complex calculations to tell them that. But now we all live and die at nine point eight meters per second squared, held up as much as we’re held down by the same numbers that stare us in the face when we step on our scales in the morning. The world keeps turning, and people keep right on clinging to it.

~*~*~

Reaching for a book on the highest shelf, I stretch further and swear I can feel it, can feel as the earth pulls me down, never letting me go. Like some jealous lover, it controls us, manipulates us, never giving us a moment’s freedom. And if we try to slip away? The consequences can be violent, brutal and deadly. The further away we try to go, the more we’re broken in the end. So we stay close, so few brave enough to slip the surly bonds of earth even as we know we will always come back in the end.

~*~*~

Other people think I take things too far, and maybe I do. But how far is too far? No one in their right mind can deny the way we are drawn to the world around us. So why am I the one who feels this suffocating pull overwhelming me when all the rest of you are comfortable with the ground under your feet? Am I wrong for not blindly accepting the world as it is laid out for us? For wanting to feel free in ways that only a handful of men and even fewer women throughout history have felt?

~*~*~

Perhaps I need to think about this some more. But it’s thinking that got me in trouble in the first place. Thinking about shrinking, about bones grinding and bodies sagging. Thinking about the molten center of the earth pulling us towards it and only the relatively fragile crust to hold us up – even while it’s pulling us down too. Thinking about how falling is easy, but forgetting to hit the ground only works in nutty, British books, not real life. Thinking what if it worked in real life too; how scary would that be? Thinking do I want to know?

~*~*~

How do you do it? Is it easy, never worrying that you would fly off into space if it weren’t for the great big rock sucking you to it like a paper clip to a super-sized magnet? What about the idea if something were ever to go wrong, we’d all fly off into outer space and a quick, cold death. Doesn’t that scare you? How do you go to work, pick up your dry cleaning, make love to your wife, play with your kids, do all those things people are supposed to do without feeling your heart clench in terror?

~*~*~

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’d love to blithely accept the laws of physics without a second thought or care in the world. Really I would. But I can’t help but remember what it is that’s keeping my car on the road and my ass in my chair. And when I remember, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when it all goes wrong. Then again, maybe I’m being silly. Nothing’s going to go wrong with gravity, right? I mean… it’s a law. But what happens when I’m the exception that proves the rule? What if you are?

~*~*~

Black holes have gravitational pulls so strong even light can’t get out. Then there are the billions of stars scattered across the universe, all pulling on each other and holding their planets in close. The whole fabric of space and time, stretched and bent by minuscule forces in massive amounts, from the Big Bang’s beginning all the way to the final fizzle, whenever and whatever that may be. Is it so surprising that someone could live in awe, in fear, paralyzed by the knowledge of what’s out there? Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am blowing things out of proportion.

~*~*~

I think I’m starting to ramble, too. Babbling, blithering. Maybe even ranting and raving. I guess I’m just some Chicken Little shrieking that the sky is falling, when even I know it’s far more likely the sky will simply float away one of these millennia. Not to worry, you say. The sky’s just fine, you say. It’s all in your head – your pretty, messed up head – you say. It was just Newton’s apple and the weight of too many years bonking me on the head and dragging us all down. Lucky for you, you stopped listening to me long ago.

~*~*~

All right. I understand. You don’t want to hear. And I understand. Really, I do. I wouldn’t want to hear what I have to say either. It makes sense in my head, though, you know? It’s only when I say the words aloud, when I put them down on paper, that’s when I wonder what in the world I was thinking. But the pounding in my heart, the tightness in my chest… that’s real. The lightheaded, going to fly away, going to fall feeling… that’s real. And I can’t help but wonder… what would happen if I turned out right?

Comments

[meredevachon]

Thank you for taking the time to decipher both the writing and your response to it, and for sharing that response with me. I really wanted to get across the discrete moments in the first parts, and lead in to the more all encompassing and interconnected ramblings as I went along. From my own experience, phobias tend to do that. First you notice specific instances of intense fear, then they build until you're shaping your whole life around something that you KNOW doesn't make sense, but you still try to make sense of it.

Again, thank you for reading.