\nI live on the second floor.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe stairs to the first landing have 12 steps; from there to first floor another 12. Then 10 steps to the landing and 8 to our floor.\n<\/p>\n
\nI know these steps well. I’ve walked them daily for the last two and a half years, after all. So I normally don’t turn on the light in the stairwell, even when it’s pitch black outside.\n<\/p>\n
\nEverything goes fine until the last step – I walk at a normal pace. But then at the last moment, something stops my foot, and I am really, really careful with that final step, even if I’ve reminded myself just seconds earlier that there’s no need.\n<\/p>\n
\nI know<\/b> that there are exactly eight steps, and that I haven’t counted wrong. I know<\/b> that there is nothing there I could stumble over. (And even if there was, there’s an equally good chance that there’s something further down – then I should be careful about every step.) And I’m never careful when going down, only up.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut none of it helps. I still hesitate.\n<\/p>\n
\nSometimes I just barely catch the faint last edge of a fear – of stepping over the edge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nEverything goes fine until the last step – I walk at a normal pace. But then at the last moment, something stops my foot, and I am really, really careful with that final step, even if I’ve reminded myself just seconds earlier that there’s no need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-observing_the_self"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}