What I do know is that the neurosis has been with me as far
back as I can remember – mostly lying dormant, occasionally giving me an
innocuous nudge, and then suddenly bursting forth to produce a mental response
that is entirely disproportionate to the circumstances which opened the
floodgates.
This is interesting. It is. Disturbing, but interesting.
The whole story is far too long and involved to tell here.
Let’s just say that it seems to be centred on Charlotte Brontë’s most
terrifying creation, Bertha Rochester, and the unfortunate circumstance of
seeing a clip from a TV production of Jane
Eyre as a young child. (It was also accidental; the babysitter let me stay
up while she was watching the TV.)
The lesson, however, is simple enough. It is that what
appears on the surface to have been a minor childhood fear can lie dormant in
the sludge at the bottom of the mind, and then rise up to shake your nervous
system to its roots many years later. And I wonder whether this is something
that can happen to anybody, or whether it’s a condition to which we HSP types
are exclusively prone. I wouldn’t know, but I could do with getting to the
bottom of it.
And incidentally, I used the nightmare as the foundation for
a story once. I thought it might be cathartic. Seems it wasn’t.
* * *
And while I’m on the subject of loopiness, I saw a
delightful little dog in Ashbourne today. Its human kept tugging at the lead in
an attempt to persuade it to walk alongside her, but every time she did the dog would roll onto its back and kick the air with its paws. A number of
people stopped to watch this unusual behaviour, and several of them went over
to pet the dog. This was clearly what the conniving little terrier wanted,
because she became very excited and made a lot of friends. Meanwhile, the human
maintained a tolerant smile and offered explanations, the gist of which was ‘My
dog is loopy but lovable.’ I can relate to that.
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