I entered the lift after taking stairs for seventeen years

Dear Delyara, I was trapped in a lift during a power failure when I was twenty-three. Forty minutes became enough to make me avoid lifts for seventeen years. I climbed twenty floors for meetings, refused hotel rooms above levels I could manage, and once turned down a job because the office was on the thirty-fourth floor. Therapy began with photographs, then standing near open lift doors, then riding one floor with my therapist. Yesterday, I rode alone for the first time. Ground to sixth floor. I pressed the button and immediately wanted to step out before the doors closed. I stayed. My heart raced. The lift stopped once at level three for another passenger. She stared at her phone and had no idea the ordinary journey beside her was something I had built toward for nine months. At six, the doors opened. I stepped out. Fear had predicted suffocation, entrapment, humiliation, death. What happened was six floors and a woman checking messages beside me.