Crawling things

I remember as a kid in Newry we lived directly next door to my great aunt and the two houses were connected at the back by a long corridor...the two dwellings were joined and there were the separate gardens on a hill at the back leading up to a big field. The garden at her side was bordered by a low wall with red slates firmly attached...well all but one of them which was completely loose and if you lifted it there was this seething mass of ...well I think we called them slaters...little black armadillo like crawlers each about the size of a finger nail. I'm not sure what the correct technical name is for them but I do know they will give you a nasty bite if you disturb them and I can still see that gap between the slates host to what must have been a full colony of the things milling about. I wouldn't say I was terrified of them or even revulsed but I certainly wasn't putting my hand anywhere near them and every time I would lift the loose slate and have a peek there was an involuntary shiver that went through me at the sight of them. Now I knew they would be there...and barring the freezing cold of winter perhaps they always were...they may well be yet if that slate us still loose though I suspect thirty years on the wall is long gone. But even though they made the skin crawl for some reason I could not walk past that bloody slate without lifting it and peeking underneath...almost every time. And almost every time my reaction was the same ..to drop it quickly and make a "yuck" noise in my head.  It was as if I was drawn to that loose slate...compelled by some strange inner force to poke at it and reveal the inevitable and familiar corruption beneath it. I still see the odd "slater"...mostly indoors as it happens and each time my mind shoots back to that row of red slates and its secret...I always kill them as there is just something extremely unpleasant about the thought of even one of them lurking about ...it's a visceral reaction devoid of reason or logic. They are just a harmless wood louse or something of that ilk, with little in the way of intent to harm...well little or no intent full stop I'd imagine. But I don't like the little buggers...ill take spiders any day.  

And the point of this completely mundane recollection? Well not much of a one to be honest. It just occurs to me that there is this propensity in us...well in me anyway...to revisit the  past ...to pick at it like a scab. Much in the way I couldn't really bring myself to go past that loose slate without looking underneath. I knew what would be there each time and I knew I wouldn't like it very much. And yet I was drawn to it. It's the same with the past...and in particular certain parts of it. I don't do it as much these days but I still do it. In the darkest recesses there are nasty, seething crawling things...much worse than slaters and their ilk...and much harder to kill. They really should stay there and die but every now and again I can't resist lifting the slate...and gazing underneath. Sometimes if I'm really foolish I will poke at what's there...always a mistake but always a strong temptation. It's as if you need a sip of the pain to fully remember what it's like...that you need to re taste some of the loss and grief and anger to keep you honest...or because as with all grief and loss it is tinged with other feelings...of love and need perhaps. Maybe it's a bit like the phantom pain you get when you loose a limb...sort of...or maybe it's something entirely different that words can't fully express. So you need that visceral kick...that lurch of the soul (whatever that is) that the unearthed memory brings with it. Or maybe I just like to torture myself ...I've been told there is comfort of sorts in emotional pain in that it is familiar to us and it is after all OUR pain and not someone else's. Anyway...who knows. I just know I do it and there it is. I doubt I'm alone in that regard. It's probably a coping mechanism of sorts. And I really must stop taking it out on a defenseless creepy crawly.