I love in Florida now, so I haven’t experienced this in a while. But in the past when I’ve driven through mountainous regions, I’ve had an almost overwhelming urge to turn the wheel so that the car goes over the edge of the cliff. I also had this urge when standing next to the Niagara River near the head of Niagara Fall–I wanted to jump in and experience that pulling rush of water.
I call this urge “The Pull.” I’ve even written a short story about it with that title.
Has this ever happened to you? What do you think it is?
Well, I’ve felt what you’re talking about, but I would not call it an “almost overwhelming urge”. More like a “terrifying realization that it would be so easy to do something horrible.”
But I have definitely felt it, in all kinds of situations. I’ve felt it while driving. Also when hiking, when I could leap to my death in a single movement. Sometime while holding a knife or a gun.
I’ve even felt this while talking to people. The realization that all it would take is a few words to change someone’s opinion of me forever. Saying “shut up, you fucking nigger” to my black boss, for example. I would never even think about saying that - but it’s scary that just saying a few words could completely screw up my life. Just like it would only take a little tug on the steering wheel to send my car into a bridge abutment.
If you really feel this as an “urge”, well…I’m glad I don’t live in Florida.
I don’t know if I would call it a “pull”, but the thought definitely presents. There’s a long stretch of road going up a mountain in Pennsylvania on the way to Johnstown where, if you’re not careful, you could actually careen off and down into oblivion, guardrail notwithstanding. I wonder, in such situations, how it would be to just go for it …not that I ever would.
By the way, I really want to read your short story.
Not an urge for me so much as the thought that I could and that it would be so easy. It’s not that I have any intention of doing it, I don’t. Sometimes it’s strange to think about how oblivion could be just a few seconds away during some mundane activity, and yet you’re perfectly calm. “Yep, just driving my car. Relaxing and listening to The Arcade Fire and narrowly avoiding death with my every decision. Sure, I could move the wheel over a few inches and plow into that retaining wall, but I won’t. It’s all good.”
I read somewhere, probably here on the dope, that it’s relatively common.
Yeah, that’s what’s it like for me. Once I was with a tour group looking at some nice scenery, and realized, “I could shove that lady off this cliff to her death if I wanted to.” Of course I didn’t, and didn’t even want to, but the realization was there.
Come to think of it, odds are pretty good that several people have had similar realizations about being able to spontaneously murder me. I wish I knew better than to dwell on such things.
No in person. When I imagine driving in situations like that (or climbing in treacherous situations or on steep climbing walls), I imagine being either shaking from fear or having an urge to drive/jump off, but when actually in the situations, I do not.
Absolutely. I’d be more surprised to hear someone say they’ve never felt it. My latest and most often occuring is the fear that I’m going to stick my hand down the garbage disposal while it’s running.
Yeah, that very phrase has been used to discuss the sensation here previously. Board search would make it hard to find since you could only search on “perverse” but a Google search on the board’s server name would work. It seems pretty common, all things considered. I experience similar stuff while driving, standing near trains, etc.
There is a big atrium at my office with walkways as high as five stories up. I was talking with a consultant that is in our office lately and mentioned how I don’t really like going near the edge on the higher floors. She said that she doesn’t either because she’s afraid that she’ll throw her pen off the edge. Strangely enough, I understood.
I am in no way suicidal, but I definitely know the feeling. It’s crazy, and when I feel it, I KNOW it’s crazy and that I’m not actually going to do it, but the impulse is there.
For me it’s not so much an ‘urge to do it’ as a ‘curiosity to know what it would be like’. Of course, I understand that curiosity can be harmful to men as well as cats, so I imagine this will forever remain a mystery to me.
I lived on the 20th floor of a highrise in downtown Detroit for several months, and the giant windows all opened wide with no screens or guard rails on them. Terrifed me to no end.
Despite having the fear that I’d at some point tumble out, I would often open them up as far as they’d go, sit on the couch, poke my head out and look out over Comerica Park. There were never any urges on my part, just a weird fear that I might tumble/fall/jump.
I imagine that if there were screens in those windows I never would have felt any of this. But all that open space so high off the pavement below…gives me the willies just thinking about it even now.
but a Google search on the board’s server name would work. It seems pretty common, all things considered. I experience similar stuff while driving, standing near trains, etc.