When I was a kid I was too afraid of ghosts and evil spirits. I couldn't look directly at the TV during the annual All Souls' Day feature of Magandang Gabi, Bayan. The white face looking out at passersby from the darkened window of an abandoned house, the noiseless woman that climbs onto passenger seat one moment then disappears the next, the unknown child that looks at the unsuspecting human from under the bed: I couldn't look at them, despite my full awareness that they were actors. And as a kid I really believed that ghosts were everywhere, and all waiting to get me alone. I couldn't enter rooms whose lights were off; I couldn't stay too long by myself in rooms that were fully lit. I was always half-expecting an old woman with long white hair to hover outside the window at night, grinning at me trapped inside, so I couldn't look out the windows at night either. (But now that I'm older, I follow on Twitter the old, long-haired, white-haired woman that seemed to play every lost, evil spirit on TV come November.)
It did not help that I had too-intense dreams. We had an old woman as a neighbor. I rarely spoke two words to her, but every day at 5am, she would be outside, sweeping her front yard. She died when I was in elementary school, and I cannot remember why. But I never forgot her face, or the rhythm of her sweeping, many years later. And If you asked me to close my eyes and visualize the lines on her forehead, I can do it, in an instant, without thinking hard. Because soon after she died, I dreamed that I was washing dishes facing a window, and there she was, outside, staring at me, inching closer and closer. Finally her face was touching the window, and for an agonizingly long time, I stared back at her, because I couldn't wake up.
There was another time, when I had a fever for a good three days. I was a small kid, and when I was sick the adults would have me lie on a wooden sofa, its back just high enough to reach the bottom of our front window. At some point during my three-day fever, I was sleeping on the wooden sofa, and I dreamed of the window above me. In my dream there was a young Chinese woman playing with the jalousie window, opening and closing it, peering at me all the while, teeth bared in a smile.
And for a time I believed that these dreams were actual visits. My sisters used to agree, and we would recount these dreams, over and over. To some extent maybe I still believe in visitations. But one day, the fear just disappeared.
I think it was because I read a story somewhere about an abandoned cottage, where a husband and wife died horrible deaths. Years later their orphan comes to live in their cottage. Her friend tells her: "People died here." And she replies, "People die everywhere." And she moved in, and the story didn't go a supernatural route. Something in me clicked; my fear went out as if by a switch.
And now, here I am, remembering my childhood terrors, seeing in my imagination every white detail of our old neighbor's face. The lights are off, I am alone in bed. Yet I type sleepily away, feeling absently for other nightmares I haven't thought about in years. Generally, I hate sleeping beside anybody now that I'm grown. I hate it when something mars the perfect quiet at night, and in Cavite, I sleep in the darkest room in the house, often alone. Occassionally I leave the window open so my cat can walk in and out without fuss. The fear has disappeared.
My nightmares aren't as otherworldly as they used to be, either. The last one I remember was during my undergrad days. Quite some time after my grandfather died, I thought I saw him. I was sleeping on the top bunk of my appointed bed, in my college boarding house. I was hovering towards wakefulness, and I half-looked at the empty space beside my narrow bed. I thought I saw him with his hand holding the bar that kept me from falling off the top bunk. He was watching me, and he was dressed in the barong we buried him in. I shot awake and screamed, fully waking up. My roommate nearest the bed turned on the lights, and I found my bedside empty.
Maybe the nightmares stopped because I couldn't be bothered with them anymore as soon as I was fully awake. Was my grandfather really looking at me from beside the bed? Maybe. But what did it matter? I couldn't see him looking anymore under the flourescent lights. In fact, after his little visit, I climbed out of bed, and wrote a somewhat unflattering essay about him, which I passed in class.
Now, when I have nightmares, they are most often about rats. (Sometimes about being the victim of a crime, but more often about rats.) Less interesting, but infinitely more plausible. And more horrible, considering that a pattern I notice about my own nightmares is they start off with me lying in the actual bed I am sleeping in. And they always go like this: I would find myself in bed, in the middle of the night, in the dark, and a rat would crawl across my blanket. It's infinitely more horrible, because I'm never sure if I'm dreaming. I woke up from such a nightmare once, while I was staying in a house in Pasig. I woke up, and jumped to my roommate's bed. In my haste I think I kneed him in the liver. And I insisted that he scour the house for the rat. Of course he couldn't find one, but by then fear had taken over and I couldn't go back to my own bed. Since my roommate was gay, there really was no happy ending for this one episode.
Believe it or not, sometimes I worry because I don't have fanciful nightmares anymore. It must be a failure of the imagination, I think. Now, I am so earthbound that I can only be afraid of the things I know for sure are real. Oh I don't want another dream about the dead, of course. But I wonder what it says about my state of mind, now that my subconscious no longer surfaces the possibility that people that may be right beside you without you knowing, when you're by yourself in the dark.
And I know it's a stupid worry. Logically, I should probably worry more about my waking fears. But they don't even make for fun storytelling, and they feel pointless to think about. So last Sunday, I watched a YouTube video about an antique haunted doll. After it scared me sufficiently, I put down my phone and closed my eyes. I slept peacefully.
It did not help that I had too-intense dreams. We had an old woman as a neighbor. I rarely spoke two words to her, but every day at 5am, she would be outside, sweeping her front yard. She died when I was in elementary school, and I cannot remember why. But I never forgot her face, or the rhythm of her sweeping, many years later. And If you asked me to close my eyes and visualize the lines on her forehead, I can do it, in an instant, without thinking hard. Because soon after she died, I dreamed that I was washing dishes facing a window, and there she was, outside, staring at me, inching closer and closer. Finally her face was touching the window, and for an agonizingly long time, I stared back at her, because I couldn't wake up.
There was another time, when I had a fever for a good three days. I was a small kid, and when I was sick the adults would have me lie on a wooden sofa, its back just high enough to reach the bottom of our front window. At some point during my three-day fever, I was sleeping on the wooden sofa, and I dreamed of the window above me. In my dream there was a young Chinese woman playing with the jalousie window, opening and closing it, peering at me all the while, teeth bared in a smile.
And for a time I believed that these dreams were actual visits. My sisters used to agree, and we would recount these dreams, over and over. To some extent maybe I still believe in visitations. But one day, the fear just disappeared.
I think it was because I read a story somewhere about an abandoned cottage, where a husband and wife died horrible deaths. Years later their orphan comes to live in their cottage. Her friend tells her: "People died here." And she replies, "People die everywhere." And she moved in, and the story didn't go a supernatural route. Something in me clicked; my fear went out as if by a switch.
And now, here I am, remembering my childhood terrors, seeing in my imagination every white detail of our old neighbor's face. The lights are off, I am alone in bed. Yet I type sleepily away, feeling absently for other nightmares I haven't thought about in years. Generally, I hate sleeping beside anybody now that I'm grown. I hate it when something mars the perfect quiet at night, and in Cavite, I sleep in the darkest room in the house, often alone. Occassionally I leave the window open so my cat can walk in and out without fuss. The fear has disappeared.
My nightmares aren't as otherworldly as they used to be, either. The last one I remember was during my undergrad days. Quite some time after my grandfather died, I thought I saw him. I was sleeping on the top bunk of my appointed bed, in my college boarding house. I was hovering towards wakefulness, and I half-looked at the empty space beside my narrow bed. I thought I saw him with his hand holding the bar that kept me from falling off the top bunk. He was watching me, and he was dressed in the barong we buried him in. I shot awake and screamed, fully waking up. My roommate nearest the bed turned on the lights, and I found my bedside empty.
Maybe the nightmares stopped because I couldn't be bothered with them anymore as soon as I was fully awake. Was my grandfather really looking at me from beside the bed? Maybe. But what did it matter? I couldn't see him looking anymore under the flourescent lights. In fact, after his little visit, I climbed out of bed, and wrote a somewhat unflattering essay about him, which I passed in class.
Now, when I have nightmares, they are most often about rats. (Sometimes about being the victim of a crime, but more often about rats.) Less interesting, but infinitely more plausible. And more horrible, considering that a pattern I notice about my own nightmares is they start off with me lying in the actual bed I am sleeping in. And they always go like this: I would find myself in bed, in the middle of the night, in the dark, and a rat would crawl across my blanket. It's infinitely more horrible, because I'm never sure if I'm dreaming. I woke up from such a nightmare once, while I was staying in a house in Pasig. I woke up, and jumped to my roommate's bed. In my haste I think I kneed him in the liver. And I insisted that he scour the house for the rat. Of course he couldn't find one, but by then fear had taken over and I couldn't go back to my own bed. Since my roommate was gay, there really was no happy ending for this one episode.
Believe it or not, sometimes I worry because I don't have fanciful nightmares anymore. It must be a failure of the imagination, I think. Now, I am so earthbound that I can only be afraid of the things I know for sure are real. Oh I don't want another dream about the dead, of course. But I wonder what it says about my state of mind, now that my subconscious no longer surfaces the possibility that people that may be right beside you without you knowing, when you're by yourself in the dark.
And I know it's a stupid worry. Logically, I should probably worry more about my waking fears. But they don't even make for fun storytelling, and they feel pointless to think about. So last Sunday, I watched a YouTube video about an antique haunted doll. After it scared me sufficiently, I put down my phone and closed my eyes. I slept peacefully.
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