― Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
Clare
In my dreams and unrepressed memories my wife’s words often return to haunt me and more so lately when they’ve been churning raw emotions inside me.
But it’s not just nightly chimeras or unbidden recollections that disturb my sleep, it’s the unexpected reliving of dark parts of my past that have invaded my waking moments.
It’s no wonder I feel I’m going mad and although haunted by guilt, what I’m experiencing is more than that—my confrontations with Clare are real, they are actual physical occurrences, so I want be clear about that. I’m not a victim and I’m not metaphysically oppressed by a living wraith.
The closest I can get to making sense of what I’m going through is to accept this as a cosmic SOS—my wake-up call from the universe, if you want, because whatever powers that be that control men’s lives knew this would be the only way to reach me.
In short, I might call it a cosmic 2x4 to the side of a very hard head.
After my latest encounter with Clare I thought about texting or phoning Ken Blogett, my Psych guru who is, for want of a better word, my therapist, although he’s become so much more than that. I see Ken as a very compassionate and supportive friend and although he ‘gets me’ and we share a simpatico he’s as much in the dark about this situation as I am.
It does seem almost narcissistic to think I can ignore Ken’s expertise and go it alone but I honestly believe this is what I’m supposed to do. As old Father Breton, my mentor in undergrad used to tell me, sometimes life demands something of you, whether you can do it or not.
It seems to me this is one of those times.
But why do I keep reliving these disturbing moments with Clare? When I get beyond the cliched explanations about guilt and its manifestations, it’s not anything as dramatic as Macbeth seeing a dagger before him. That was, I believe, a classical instance of fear and guilt producing a hallucination—a dagger of the mind, so to speak.
My experiences, on the other hand, aren’t hallucinatory or mystical, but mundane. They’re simply episodes from my life, from my own lived experience and for some reason I’m being forced to repeat these as if I were a slow learner.
That last thought gives me pause and I have to stop and think about that. I have to slow down. I'm reminded of the psalmists use of the Hebrew word, ‘selah’ in the Bible which has been variously translated to mean pause, silence or intermission.
Some scholars go even further and say the word is unknowable. and perhaps it is.But what does one do when confronted with a mystery? I think a sane person would shut his mouth and go silent in awe.
I know I need to act but I also need to know what the hell I'm doing and that's why for the moment I will pause and reflect as I try to divine what the universe expects from me.