A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Haunting Myself

Part 1: A Boy And His Ghost

Introduction to a daymare

You've certainly heard of nightmares, but a daymare?  Can you imagine a daydream that veers to the dark side?  I can.

Depression is compressing, isolating, even terrifying.  When it's excessively familiar, it can become a darkling refuge from a child's inner turmoil.  Simon & Garfunkel's song, "Sound Of Silence," expresses my sentiments most eloquently.

Suzanne Vega's, "Solitude Standing" also captures the mood.

Add my unspecified autism, family problems, and who knows what else.  My results were volatile, like emotional gasoline.  Perhaps liquid methane would be a more appropriate.  It liquifies much like nitrogen does.

•  True: much of the time "emotional gasoline" seems like an exaggeration.  During those times, "emotional freezer burn" or "emotional frostbite" may be more appropriate.  That stated, gasoline's volatility can be easily overestimated or underestimated — as can be its flammability.

••  About gasoline, I'm not being only metaphorical.  Gasoline can be dangerous, even toxic.  Consider this warning a PSA: Public Service Announcement.

Note: never use gasoline to start, or accelerate, a fire.  If something goes wrong, then the collateral damage can be dire ... or even hideously painful.  (I've visited a burn ward.  Trust me: you don't want to be the patient being visited ... if you can avoid it.)

•••  Another thing that's too frequently underestimated is residential electricity.  Whether it's 50 hertz or 60 hertz, 115 volts or 120 volts — the electricity in many peoples' houses and businesses is potentially lethal.  Treat it with — great — respect.

{Decades ago, I was an electrician in the military.  We considered 30 volts and above "high voltage."  If 30 volts is potentially hazardous...  Get the picture?  😐}

••••  Stay.  Safe.  Please?

Mary's Knoll

Mary was a family dog that I likely never met.  If I ever did, it precedes my oldest, conscious memories.  Whether or not she was buried on or near her namesake landmark is unknown to me.

As a boy, I'd habitually wander my family's mostly forested property.  Mary's Knoll was between The Big Pasture and The Swamp, which abutted Miles' Pond.  My family's water well was close by.  All 5 landmarks punctuated my childhood, more for good than ill.

One bright day, I was daydreaming while walking along The Boy Scout Trail, which was the former dirt road from my family's house to our well.  (Yes, further down this trail there was a clearing sometimes used by Boy Scouts.)  Mary's Knoll was to the west, and The Swamp was to the east.

I imagined concentrating all of my personal darkness — everything that I disliked about myself.  Then I began visualizing this process.  The images that my brain generated that day would eventually shatter me before reconstructing me.  I've risen like a phoenix from my own, emotional, funeral pyre.

"Charles"

A pale and cracked landscape filled my mind's eye.  It resembled both chapped skin and a dried lakebed.  A black sore formed in the center of my vision.  (I likened it at the time to an anthrax sore.)

The sore began bleeding.  Suddenly, a red geyser erupted.  It flushed out all of the blackness, rapidly cleansing the wound.  I was equally fascinated and welcomingly melancholy.  This had my attention!

I named this phenomenon, this geyser of blood, "Charles."  I silently declared "him" to be my ghost.

Charles was at once my worst friend and my best enemy.  I focused my loneliness, my adolescent angst, my fears, etc. into this spiritual compartment.