Have you ever experienced something you can't explain?
When I was 6, I put a kitten in a plastic container. I closed the lid. It was one of those air-tight containers. I didn’t know that. I was pretending that she was an astronaut and having a space travel.
Then there was my favorite cartoon on television. I instantly got engrossed. Back then cartoon channels had this successive airing scheme that got kids to binge-watch. I spent maybe a couple hours watching TV. Then I returned my attention to the transparent container.
The kitten was lying on her side and looked like she was sleeping. I opened the lid. The kitten didn’t move. I touched her and she was warm. So I thought she was sleeping.
Hours passed and the sun went down. She hadn’t moved at all. I got worried. I got back to the container and saw that her eyes were half open. I still remember it vividly. Her eyes glistening in the gloom of the living room. Then it clicked and I touched her chest. It was cold. I will forever remember the cold panic that crept up my arm and ran through my entire body.
I cried for hours. My mom returned at night and she cried too. She tried to comfort me saying it was a mistake but I cried the entire day, and next morning, I remembered what I had done and started crying again. I’d watch TV, then cry during the commercial break, then watch cartoons again, then cry again. I felt most horrible. I tried to strangle myself, to experience what the kitten must have felt until she died. Suffocation felt terrible but never as much as the guilt.
Fast forward 10 years and I was 16 and one of the unhealthiest teenagers around. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I was starting to hear things. It first started as a little girl singing somewhere. I’d lie in my bed in my quiet room and I’d hear this girl singing, uncanny melodies with unintelligible words. Had I lived in an apartment, I’d have regarded it as a neighbor down or upstairs, but I lived in a detached home. I never mentioned this to anyone because thanks to bipolar disorder I had done a fair amount of research on mental disorders and this symptom was clearly pointing at schizophrenia. I tried to ignore it.
Then one day the voice started talking to me. At first it was innocuous, such as “I like that” when I saw a picture of a cake. I absolutely ignored all of that internal voice. Then she started asking, “Why are you ignoring me? I am so lonely here.” I was freaking out at that point. I had dropped out of school 2 years ago and I never left home. I never turned off the lights in my room because I couldn’t bear the idea of having to deal with the voice in the dark. I developed insomnia and slept during the day, playing video games through the night. I was seriously considering killing myself, more sure as days passed.
Then one day, in the afternoon at around 3:00 PM, I fell asleep in my bed. Then I instantly opened my eyes, and the sunlight hadn’t changed so I thought I was asleep for a few minutes or so. Then I felt a presence at the doorway.
I turned my head to look at the doorway and was petrified. There was a thing at the doorway looking at me. I can only describe it as a creature made of smoke, with glowing red eyes. It was the shape of a kitten. It was sitting in a pose that cats often assume, with its forelegs upright and hind legs sitting. It was staring at me with its glowing red eyes, half-buried in its smoke body which ever so slightly billowed to the current of air. I knew it was the kitten.
I have clumsily tried to draw it.
The eyes were glowing, like emitting light. I couldn’t get that right.
In the midst of the intense fear, I felt the long-forgotten guilt. Tears were streaming down my face, and I explained to the thing that I was sorry, I have been sorry my entire life, and that I was planning to kill myself soon anyway so maybe you can take my body. Such gibberish. It just kept on staring at me.
Then I was no longer afraid of it. It looked so forlorn and lonely. I wanted to give it a hug. My mother had bought the kitten because she was feeling sorry for me watching TV all day all alone until her shift ended at night. I felt like I was looking at myself at age 6. I just wanted to hug it and tell it that it didn’t have to be this way and it’s all my fault.
Then I snapped out of it. I was in my room, but the warm afternoon sunlight was gone and the blueish cold light of 6:00 PM was filling my room. I was still petrified, with cold sweat covering my forehead. I couldn’t leave my bed that day, except for the time when I jumped out of it for 10 seconds to turn on the lights before night took over.
Strangely, the voice was gone after that “dream.” I heard no voice of the little girl or her singing. My brain was quiet. And anxiety was gone too. I recovered over the course of years and eventually went to college and everything has been stable ever since.
I know logically this was my guilt or rather childhood trauma playing with my mind, but still it’s the most uncanny experience I’ve ever had.
What an extraordinary experience. Sounds as if your subconscious stored the guilt - and ingeniously processed it. That was a major memory recovery! Pleased to hear you're better :)
W-O-W! This is the most remarkable act of the human brain I've heard!
And your writing is awesome, by the way... had me almost petrified myself. 😮
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