Chasing Away The Ghost In My Head

Chasing Away The Ghost In My Head

When I go back in time in my anxious search for my earliest recognition of the world around me, the farthest my mind could travel and remember was a night in my childhood when I was about 3 years old. Some would probably recall as their first memory a cherished gentle past, such as a mother's smile, a father's touch, a toy, a pet, a loved one's caring hands. Those things, imprinted in the subconscious, would form part of the foundation of someone's view of the world around him and would, in some cases, influence his later life, adversely or favorably, as he would allow. That night, I had been at the receiving end, albeit unknowingly, of an unpleasant experience, the effect of which would resurface and recur in a haunting, sometimes debilitating sort of way through the years of my childhood and beyond.

It was early evening. With my mother visiting my grandma, whose house was just a few steps away from ours, my younger sister who was just starting to walk and I were left in the care of my half-sister who was in her early teens. The night was dark and the inside of our house was illuminated only by a small gas lamp that was the usual source of light in the barrio since the wonder of electricity has not yet made its way to most areas in the Philippines at that time shortly after the second world war. I was playing with my little sister, her small hands holding on to the edge of a low coffee table to steady her while I pretended to chase her. Giggling and animated, she was wearing a light blue summer dress with little flowers embroidered across the bodice. (Incidentally, that was the only memory I had of her because she would pass away from pneumonia not too long after that). Our older sister was sitting close to the lamp, reading a book with pictures, and I could not recall the particulars, but I only knew that the pictures were scary when she showed them to me. After that, it wasn't clear to me how I got on our dining table, whether she put me up there or I climbed on a chair to get there. All I could remember was I was screaming on the top of my lungs in fright because she was holding the book with the scary pictures teasing me that whatever was there would eat me. I was unable to get out of the table because it was too high for me so all I could do was jump up and down, crying and screaming. My mother probably heard my bloodcurdling shrieks of distress and that was how I was rescued from the fearsome pictures that in my three year old mind were capable of eating me alive.

The trauma caused by that incident was not clearly apparent after that, I suppose. But as a grew older, I recognized I harbor fear of things that did not make sense to some. I was afraid of the dark, of ghosts, and stories of human encounters with specters of the departed from those who subscribe to such belief just fueled my imagination and magnified my fear. I was often teased and ridiculed as an adult, especially by family members, because they said it was totally out of character for somebody as feisty, obstinate, and willful as I was to be afraid of ghosts that had not been proven to exist. But whatever anybody said, I remained almost paralyzed by unfounded fear when alone at night inside the house. Interestingly, I felt more secure from the ghosts in my head when I was outside. There were instances when I would seek the outdoors when by myself instead of remaining in the house. If that was an offshoot of that incident one scary night inside the house of my childhood, I was not certain. I had improved over time but until now, there were instances when the fear would resurface. It had become less intense but I have not totally conquered it and as ridiculous and nonsensical as it may seem, I may never will.