Acrophobic

I know there were several kinds’ phobias but I wasn’t sure if I had any of them. I used to get scared of wooden bridges especially during the bicycles rides and feel giddy when I used to look down from a several storied balcony. I also sometimes get nightmares of falling down from a staircase and then I would wake up with a start. Even then I did not get a clue.

But then there is this one incidence (2 years ago) which made me decide that I am true acrophobic.

We have this habit of hiking anywhere and everywhere its inviting. Once we went hiking on a Moravian (South part of Czech Republic) mountain.

We hiked to the top most part of the mountain and heard from a local that there is this tower about 30 meters high which we can climb and behold breathtaking views.
We were excited by this offer and followed the direction to find this tower. We had to climb the mountain a little bit to reach this.

We atlast reached this tower and Kiran was all excited. But I could not believe a 30 meters tower can be this challenging. I say challenging because you have to climb this tower which is made up of just steel or some metal mesh!!

 
Then we started to climb up the tower by the steps and I could see the ground below. While continuing to do so, I started to panic because the further we climbed, the scary the ground below looked to me. I was feeling as if I would be falling down.
 

Kiran asked me not to look down and just to climb up. But how could that be possible because I had already seen below and then I stopped and then started to cry and cry (I am not a drama queen by the way).

He had gone further few steps ahead and he had to come down to console me. I told him that I then understood what it meant to be at the edge of death and again started to cry and cry (damn in that shaky situation I had to pick my tissues from my rucksack!). He requested me not to be this sensitive and gave a lecture that “it’s always good to remove fear by directly facing it”. It made sense to me and then reached the top of the tower somehow by not looking down.

After reaching the top, since it was a windy day, the top of the tower started to oscillate a bit and I started to shout. Fortunately we were the only 2 people who were there on this tower that afternoon. Kiran was shouting at me (it was windy and he had to shout at me for me to hear him) and trying to convince me not to worry since the tower was designed like that and it's completely safe and he said otherwise they would not have left the tower open for visitors(what a logic!!).
What?? A tower designed to oscillate a bit and to kill the visitors out of heart attack?? I felt it was outrageous!

Then he started to view the beautiful scene below and asked me to go to him and see the same. I did so. And the scenery was indeed breathtaking. Its Greenery all over the place.

On the Tower- my attempt on taking photos in a shaky hand:

Beautiful scenary:

 

Kiran trying to give me confidence :o):

 Then we had to walk down and I decided I will close my eyes and then hold his hand and to walk down. I understood how valuable our dear lives are!!

Then we reached the ground and I had to relax for almost 15 minutes to come to normality and then we continued our journey.