Last night I had a series of incredibly bizarre dreams, (remind me not to reheat ChickfilA at 11:30 at night) but there was one in particular that has stayed with me all day since waking.
It was about cats. Truth be told, I feel similar ways about cats and babies: "Oh, my gosh! So stinkin' cute! How adorable! Okay. Take it away. Thanks for indulging the girl in me, but I'm good." As long as it's not mine to keep, I'm good. We can circle each other with wary looks, a polite nod. You go your way. I'll go mine. Yes, I'm still talking about both cats and babies.
Anyway. In this dream, there was a cat and she had a litter of kittens--6 to be exact. My whole family was so excited and it brought back memories of when I was quite young and my whole family went to someone's house to pick out two kittens of our very own--so excited because they're so tiny and can barely help themselves.
For whatever reason, I was compelled to make sure all of these cats would stay together, but they kept escaping my room. What was a bit odder was that it was my old room in my parents' house, but with all of my sister's current furniture, who resides there now. So I would catch two or three of the cats, put them back in my room, close the door and go in search of the rest. Every time I would come back to the room to place more of the litter there, the door would be open and they would have escaped.
In my dream, my sister is laying on the floor doing nothing, but I'm assuming it's her that is opening the door and allowing my efforts to be futile. I end up screaming at her because I am incredibly frustrated that these cats keep escaping and I can't get them all together.
At the very end of the dream, the mom cat finally comes with me to collect her litter and we get all of them into the room to be together and the door remains shut. I don't play with the cats or even really acknowledge them after that.
I chalked this dream up to any other strange dreams I've ever had, but almost all of my dreams as of late have been work related and/or are obviously connected to something I'm stressing about or poring over at work.
I took the time to be still and think over the dream. I love the word "interpretation" because it means just about anything can come from whatever it is you're interpreting--it's but one perspective. I do believe certain dreams are significant and shouldn't be ignored. Here is my interpretation after much thought:
In October of 2008, exactly 7 years ago, I was in South Africa in a Christian discipleship program. 7 years ago is when I shared my first kiss with my second boyfriend after having just recently broken up with my first boyfriend and love of 3 years. Keep in mind, I was 18 and a complete idiot (still am), but there was something incredibly innocent about this relationship. ...at first.
Without going to into too much detail, after a very short-lived, naive romance with this boy, he was heading back to the States and I was about to pile into a car with four of my closest friends to make the drive to Cape Town. There was a water tower on campus that I remember in startling detail. It was a bit of a "thing" to break through the gate there and climb to the top. You could see for miles and miles up there and I loved it. It made me feel diminutive. It made me feel like there had to be something bigger.
This last night we were together for months is seared into my brain because I cried about it once when I realized what it did--or rather, what it undid. Up until this point in SA, I had been working toward healing from a lot of things in my past--some self-inflicted while others were a victimization. For the first time in years, I felt light. I felt new. I know that may be hard to comprehend being that then, and even now, I am a child, but I can't explain other than that was how it felt. To me, I had made genuine progress and I felt as though everything could and would be different from then on.
We did a lot of talking on top of that water tower. He did a lot of crying. There was something inside me that tried to force up tears to empathize. After all, I'm a girl. I should be comforting him by showing him how much I was going to miss him as well, but their sincerity was lacking. It felt like a show and that was when I started to feel uncomfortable. We kissed. Again, I don't want to go into detail as the details don't matter, but things got far more physical without my permission and with my urging to slow down.
I think the most terrifying part of the whole experience once I garnered control of the situation was the way I felt after. This girl that had been thrown back to being a child in all of the best ways--innocent, zealous for life and all of its offerings--was replaced by the bitter, closed teenager she had been. In that moment, to me, chastity was dead and more importantly, any hope I had in being chaste was obliterated. It's hard to explain why, but I climbed down the ladder a different girl than I climbed up. It was a relief to not have to see him after that, because I didn't have to face it and with time, I forgot that moment had changed me, and when I saw him again, smiling was easy and so was loving him.
This isn't about painting this boy to be a monster. We are all monsters, especially me. This is about the number 7.
Seven years ago, I had a hope I have never had since. I had hope that I got to be different than who I felt I had been condemned by my friends, acquaintances, family and myself to be. For seven years, I've been fighting to get that girl back--the girl who laughed and loved with abandon, the girl who didn't even bother looking in mirrors or at reflections in a window, the girl who wasn't petrified of being vulnerable and who dreamed with an insatiable appetite for the impossible.
And it may seem silly to you--all these things I've drawn from a dream about cats--but to be honest, I don't care. Because I think I'm going to get all those cats in one room and shut them away.
She'll be wiser and she'll be stronger and she'll be more somber I think, but... I think... I believe I'm going to get that girl back.
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