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.