Forgiving Claire

A s a young child, I had an ongoing daydream that two young girls and their mother were watching my life unfold. They lived inside my head, but I could picture them, seated on a couch, in a room that looked exactly like our living room. They would watch, “secretly”, peering through a crack in the door. “Can you believe what happened today?” one of them would say. They weren’t merely voyeurs, spying on me for their own entertainment. There was sympathy in that voice.

I don’t know when these spectators disappeared from my brain’s inner living room. But I do know that as I matured into my teenage years and early twenties, they were replaced by a very damaged baby. I believed he was responsible for every self-sabotaging decision I made. Unlike the two young girls and their mother, who watched the details of my life from a distance, this “damaged baby” had the power to actually alter my direction. He was not merely a witness. He was a part of me. It didn’t matter that I wanted to go to class or to write music at home. The voice in my head was dissuasive. He would say, “That professor is so full of shit. Why bother even validating her shitty opinions by attending her class?” Or, “You haven’t played that guitar in three weeks. It’s only going to give you blisters if you pick it up today.” I was incredibly susceptible to these irrational rationales of the “damaged baby” and I came to believe he was some fucked up remnant of my younger self. The same little boy who had been watched by imaginary people was now himself an imaginary figure, living in my brain’s inner living room, ruining my life.

I have a faded memory of a woman beating me with a belt when I was about five or six years old. Her name was Claire and she was an au pair charged with looking after my brother and I. When my parents were out one evening, she told us that she was going to punish us in an effort to curb any bad behavior the next day. It was not uncommon to be on the business end of the back of her hand or the lash of her tongue. She used to knock our heads together for acting in ways she didn’t like. She once literally washed my mouth out with soap for talking back to her. But this night felt different, more calculated, less a reaction to a specific situation than a pathological attempt to exert control. She ran a bath and told my brother to get in. I can remember the look of fear on his face and the smell of the bath water, all porcelain and drain pipes. Then she placed me over her knee and whipped me with a belt.

I’ve had this memory for thirty-five years. I made no mention of it until I was fourteen. I told my mother one night around our kitchen table. She was horrified and told me that neither she nor my father had particularly liked Claire, but believed that my brother and I did, so kept her on for longer than they would have liked. As a parent now, I can imagine the anger and guilt she would have felt upon learning that the person she’d paid to watch over us had been so reckless.

I know nothing about Claire’s life, her background, or the circumstances under which she came to take care of us. I do know that people are capable of doing terrible things when they’re young and angry. She had it in her to beat up on two very young boys. I’m guessing she had some damaged babies living in her head too.

I spent many of the next ten years in and out of therapy dealing with these memories. I was a depressed twenty-something, afraid of the world outside my apartment, failing out of school, smoking too much pot and a pack-and-a-half a day of Camel Lights. I watched endless hours of TV, often never changing out of my pajamas. My guitar sat in the corner of the bedroom daring me to play it. I bought a saxophone to re-inspire myself, until it too began to judge me. The damaged baby had taken over.

I needed to have it out with this contrary inner-voice. It had too much sway over me. I knowingly made wrong choices, aware of the consequences. Avoiding social interactions, developing infatuations with unavailable girls I knew would do me harm, choosing reruns of Seinfeld, The Simpsons and X-Files at the expense of virtually everything else in my life. I had spent my entire childhood and adolescence working towards a career as a professional musician, and here I was, with time to spare, home recording equipment and a small collection of instruments to play and compose with and I chose to smoke pot and watch TV. I was living in New York, where opportunities to meet and play with other musicians were ubiquitous, but I rarely left my apartment.

The voice would say, “You’re not safe out on those streets. Stay home. You can’t trust anybody.” I found it very hard to argue with that logic. I was afraid, after all; of strangers, of failure, of having to recon with my past. Everywhere I went I believed I was in danger. I would change subway cars or get off the train altogether if I didn’t like the way somebody looked at me. I used to map out escape routes when I was in public spaces in the event there was a reason I needed to run. Paranoia was overwhelming and it made me feel totally alone. I craved companionship and the respect of my peers. I wanted to meet girls and to form a band. But I lacked the motivation to rise above the negative, angry voice in my head. I was meek and it made me so angry. I blamed Claire for filling me with rage and fear. But my anger was self-directed, as if taking myself down was somehow tantamount to exacting revenge. This is what depression looks like. Rage, turned inwards, exhorting me to act against my own self-interests.

For the last decade or so I’ve started to wonder if my memories of Claire happened the way I remember them. This isn’t denial or a rewriting of my own history. It’s just that when I recall the facts, they don’t make a lot of sense. Certainly, the fog of thirty-five years can alter mental imagery in myriad ways. I say above that she put me across her lap, but I picture her standing over me. I can remember the conversation about her plans to preemptively strike us, but have zero memory of her actually whipping me. In fact, I sort of remember her lifting the belt, but not actually hitting me with it. Maybe it was all a threat, or her idea of a joke.

Whipping me with a belt would have left an obvious mark. It seems unlikely that my parents wouldn’t have noticed. I remember Claire coming into our bedroom repeatedly and forcing me to keep my legs under the covers despite my protestations that I was too hot. At some point during therapy, I connected that memory with the evening in question. It made sense to me at the time that she was trying to conceal any evidence of what she’d done. But I don’t know that that’s the case. Those nights could have been two years apart.

It begs the question: If it did happen, but I’m not sure that it did, does it even matter? Why give any gravity to this memory that consumed me for years if I can’t even verify it?

I’m ok. I’ve got a great, supportive wife and two children that I love more intensely than I ever imagined possible. My life is good. I’m not worried that I’m going to lose my temper enough to hurt my own or anybody else’s kids. Currently, we are trying to figure out a short-term child-care option for our four-month old son. The idea of an au-pair was briefly discussed. It’s an option that makes me too uncomfortable to even consider. I may not worry about my own temper boiling over to a point that I lose control. But the thought of trusting a stranger to live in our house and to look after my children cuts a little too close to the bone.

I still battle with self-doubt and an overly critical inner-voice. But I know well enough now that I have the power to overcome it. It is a priority for me as a parent to instill my children with this notion. I want them to grow up less afraid of the world than I was. There’s plenty of room for skepticism and self-awareness without getting bogged down in fear and paranoia. It’s easy for me to get carried away trying to protect them from every conceivable threat, both real and imagined. I know that I can’t keep them safe from the unpredictable world outside. The best I can do is to provide a safe haven here at home.