Catharsis

Two nights ago, I dreamt about my cat again. Like most dreams, there wasn’t much sense or logic or continuity in that dream, only vivid images and raw emotions that have been stripped naked of all conscious restraint and pretense all stitched seamlessly together. There is little need for me to wring my brain dry to remember the surreal details of the dream, as I recall them perfectly.

It began with me walking down a dark alley, the kind that I used to take on my way home from school to ride one of the jeepneys parked nearby. I don’t remember seeing anything else but the pavement I was walking on as it glistened with the remnants of a good downpour, puddles of rainwater reflecting the moonlight from above and illuminating my way. But then suddenly there I was, passing by an abandoned, empty lot, one covered with tall blades of wild grass and enclosed by a cyclone wire fence. I found myself stopping near the lot and taking a peak at what was inside.

Dreams tend to be very vague, symbolic and metaphorical, so I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I somehow knew that the lot, in that particular dream, was where all the things from my past went to when they were no longer part of the present. Beyond the fence, shrouded by phantasmagoric blankets of mist and shadows, was a purgatory of sorts for all the dead people, all the dead animals, all the mangled, decapitated toys and faded memories from way back when that had already crossed over to the afterlife.

It was there that I saw her, my dear old cat, lying limp on the ground, very much like how I remember her when she died. But then she got up, walked across the field, sauntered toward me in the same regal way that she used to, slinked her way out of the entangled mesh fence, and presented herself in all her living feline glory at my feet. Suddenly overcome by my surging emotions, I bent down and stroked her, fondling her small face and wiping the usual dirt that streamed from her bright green eyes down to the contours of her cheeks. She looked so much better and happier, I noticed, her fur immaculate in her newfound youth. I ignored the truth that she had died months ago, and chose to believe that she had now returned to me, by some ambiguous miracle, at least for the meantime.

It was then, just when I was beginning to actually believe the illusion of her reappearance, that my rationality took over, lectured on the infallible laws of science and violently demolished the misleading dream right there and then, like some vile cockroach suddenly crushed to death by the sole of some vindictive rubber slipper. And then everything went black. The dream had come to an end.

It’s almost been a year since she suddenly passed away but I still can't seem to accept my cat’s death as I keep having these recurring dreams, dreams of her coming amazingly back to life. There’s a song from my childhood, I remember hearing almost all the time, and it says that a dream is a wish your heart makes. If that's the case, then could it be I’m secretly, deep in my heart, still wishing for her to one day resurface on my doorstep as if nothing happened? As if her death was merely a discrepancy in the ever changing flow of time and reality that had now been resolved, a bad nightmare that was now suddenly over? Or does it mean it is but time to let go and simply embrace unquestioningly everything that has come to pass? I don’t have the answers to all these questions.

I grew up with my cat. Perhaps that is the reason why the big void she left agape inside me when she died still has somehow not found any closure yet, a wide open wound that was never really sutured, only cleaned and covered up with useless gauze. The normality of her presence was an anchor for me, a center that I balanced myself on. For as long as I can remember, she has always been a part of my life, always around somewhere, waiting to be found and showered with pure, undivided attention. Until very recently. I’ve told myself countless times with resolute conviction that I had already allowed myself time to grieve her passing. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe the wounds have healed, but the scars that have now formed are ugly. Somehow, deep inside the very core of my twisted being, I do feel I have not yet completely graduated from the initial phase of denial. Maybe I find cathartic release in these dreams, a chance for me to ventilate all my unexpressed emotions, feelings of anguish and mourning and loneliness I could no longer outwardly express, thoughts ands sentiments I refused to accept and acknowledge and liberate.

It’s a wonderful feeling, being reunited with someone you never thought you'd ever see or meet again. But it gets creepy when you're reunited, even just in the realm of sleep, with someone who's already supposedly died. The problem with dreams is that they create otherwise impossible realities so convincingly that you end up believing them, at least at the time that you are dreaming. You end up so perfectly deceived, hoping that they become true, assuming that you haven’t yet believed that they are. But then you wake up, and you realize that it simply cannot happen, because in the plane of existence that we live in, there are no such things as pink cotton candy clouds and winged horses and rainbow slides and magical powers. Not even the resurrection of our loved ones.

I know, and psychology tells me, that dreams are a clever way for our subconscious minds to communicate to us, to convey hidden messages we already know but seem to repeatedly miss by some mental anomaly. But they never really tell us upfront what it is that they wish to say. And you can’t plead to or force them to tell you, either. So it really is up to you and your conscious mind to figure things out and decipher the buried lesson, something that in the end is supposed to help you change your life for the better.

As of now I still cannot understand what that dream was supposed to tell me. I haven’t given it much thought, either, as only more and more questions are born, questions that never really seem to find any answers. I might put my already compromised mental health at risk if I try too much. I’ll have to wait until the realization presents itself to me more clearly, and then I’ll find out what that dream truly meant. In the meantime, I will continue sleeping and dreaming, hoping to find out more about myself and this life I’m trying to live inside my own head. Wish me luck. I might not even come out of it alive.