Fear of Skiing

This is not really about skiing, at least totally. It’s about trauma. But I am afraid skiing or at least hate it. Hey, some of my best friends are skiers….nah, not really. Actually I looked it up – there is no phobia for skiing, just one for fear of snow – Chionophobia (and I don’t like snow generally). My only skiing friend abandoned me after I had a stroke. Such is part of stroke aftermath. Although, he didn’t seem like a jerk. My true few friends are still friends. And some relatives ski. At least my sister broke her arm and rather than get back on the horse, she went to Mexican beaches to recuperate.

Let’s begin with my one only skiing experience. But here we go on another digression . As I said it’s more of a hate. One of the only things that I am definitely afraid of is heights, especially high buildings. Ever since my father took me up the Empire State Building. I tried at one point to over come this fear by regular rock climbing, with marginal success. I f I look at a tall building I feel sick. That strong. So that’s my main fear. But once again I’ll get back to skiing.

You see, every Christmas, when I was young, my brother, sister and I always got the same one big gift. That year those gifts were skis. I can remember better Christmases but things like new bikes had already happened in previous years. So the basic idea was to use the skis as we lived relatively close to some hills where skiers amassed in hoards. I successfully avoided skiing for almost 2 months. But come February my sister was forced, I mean asked, to take me. So when we arrived, I was immediately dumped into the direction of the beginner’s class which I regarded as snow plow hell. I knew I disliked it before I even got a chance to try. You see I never made it to the lesson. There was a crevice on the way, small crevice but big enough for me to fall/slide into and get very stuck. I struggled for the whole time that others learned to snow plough. Especially maddening was a man who skied quickly right over top of me. Over the years I have wished many curses on him. However, that may not have worked as I had done so to the bullies from grade 8 and classmates.com showed me how successful one of them was. By the way, do not use classmates as bullies may contact you and classmates bombard you with spam.

Finally, my trauma that changed my life forever. As that was a Saturday. I was exhausted from skiing. I later found out that my dad, who was a Supreme Court Judge, had said that he could barely make it to his car on Friday after work due to chest pains but had not gone to the hospital. I have no idea if I even saw him on Saturday. Come Sunday morning about 2 am, I was awoken to say my dad was ill and wanted to see me. He was lying down in great pain. He kissed me and said goodbye and that he loved me. Things were total chaos. I went to hide in my room and feel asleep. Remember that I was eleven. Therapists tell me that was a fairly normal experience but I’ve never believed them. I do not forgive myself . I was awoken by a loud scream from my Mother. I knew he was dead. The doctor phoned the ambulance too late. I hate him for that. My life was never the same and changed forever. I no longer could remember all those years except for a very few memories – most not great. I became a social worker. Then later in life I was traumatized again and lost my career unfairly. I have never worked again. And I really, really hate those perps. I love you Dad and miss you. You would have been 98 this year…I went to your grave once. Only Mom had done that before. I didn’t know what to do. You don’t even have a marker. All I said was “I’m sorry”. Then I had to go as my daughter – your granddaughter you never got to meet – was asleep in the car.