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THE HAUNTING OF MY HOUSE, NOTES FROM READING WUTHERING HEIGHTS

My cousin told me that he saw a ghost in the house the other day. According to him, a white humanoid figure suddenly sped past the doorway from where he stood in the kitchen. He tried following it, but the figure had already disappeared by the time he made it to the hallway.

I'm skeptical about the event. And yet, I can't help but see this as some sort of confirmation of the thoughts that have been haunting me recently. Like how much I genuinely enjoyed reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

I read it while on a family vacation to El Salvador, seeking refuge in the pages of a book where dysfunction was also running rampant. The traumas and pain continuing down these characters' bloodlines felt so familiar, almost parallel to those experienced by the members of my own family.

The first generation of Earnshaws in the novel that we meet in the novel (Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw) are clearly abusive to their children, though in different ways. Heathcliff is cherished by his father and Catherine but treated like a beast by everyone else in the family; Catherine is physically disciplined and neglected by her father but loved by Heathcliff and Nelly; and Hindley is wholly neglected, and hit when his presence is acknowledged.

This cycle of abuse had a clear impact on each child as well as future generations. Once Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley uses his newfound power within the household to relegate Heathcliff to servant status, projecting the pain of his mistreatment onto the boy. Instead of faulting his father for the mistreatment he experienced and using the pain of his experiences to make better choices, he repeats the abuse from his father, especially in the treatment of his own son, Hareton.

The last generation of Earnshaws and Lintons, in Cathy and Linton, may have been treated better than Catherine, Heathcliff, and Hindley, but they are subjected to pain regardless. Everyone is so deeply entrenched in this toxic environment that the cycle inevitable repeats. They are all victims and villains at different points of their lives. I see the same among the members of my own family.

My grandmother lost her mother when she was young, just as like the Earnshaw children early in the book. She has also lost two children, the pain of which I cannot even imagine. And while I hold sympathy for the hardships she faced and admire her determination to keep her children alive, I have a hard time reconciling these feelings with the pain that she inflicted upon these same children. She passed down her anger and paranoia to my mother, the eldest of her siblings, who has passed that down to me.

Unlike the Earnshaws, who are explosive, my family compartmentalizes our feelings. We store them away as soon as they fizzle out, the colors return to our view and the head stops reeling. Tears are rarely shed. We pretend that bad moments have been forgotten, but the feelings they invoked are always beneath the surface.

I may never know the truth of it all, what led my grandparents, parents, to act the way they do. Like Nelly hiding Hareton in the cupboad during Hindley's drunken rages, these situations are hidden from view in the hopes of making them go away. The fears, worries, shame, guilt, rage, all stored away, behind the salt.

And these memories become looming ghosts. It's a haunting worse than some poltergeist.

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is haunted by the ghost of Catherine, the lover (and sister!) he lost, initially through Catherine's own decision, then by his own plan for revenge against his family. Although Heathcliff is the only one who sees the apparition, everyone else in the family suffers under his tyrant rule. He takes out all of his hatred on individuals, including his own son, who have had nothing to do with the ill actions of their parents. Just as one example, this ill temper gets passed along to Linton (the son in question), who then abuses his own wife. Another repetition of the cycle.

The second half of the novel reminds me of how I often feel about my family. Like Cathy, I feel trapped in this house of madness. Everyone is always mad at somebody, and I'm not clean from this either. It often feels like there is no escape from these terrible feelings and memories that seep through the cracks within the walls. As long as I'm around these people, trauma simmers like a boiling pot that someone forgot to turn off until I'm breathing in the smoke and coughing up a lung. It's been here for so long, I can't recall life without the haze.

Maybe the white figure my cousin saw really was a ghost, a lingering remnant of someone who died long ago in our house. Maybe it's confirmation of my belief that the past, even what we don't know, can haunt us. The memories are human, so it takes on a human form. Perhaps it wants us to follow so that it can engulf us entirely. Maybe it just wants to be found just so that it knows someone else knows it's here. To be acknowledged can be a powerful thing. To be recognized can be a relief.

These ghosts, real or not, will remain until each one of us finally turns around. I hope we can be brave enough to tell it, "Hello."