Proof

I dreamed of my dogs last night. I was always thinking that they were waiting for me coming home after graduation. I imagined at first they almost forgot who I was so they came to me and sniffed. Then all of sudden they remembered me, and started jumping around.

But when the door of my home appeared, when I lent my hand towards the knob, and I opened the door, it was empty there. The side table that my parents had been using for years. The new couch once my mom didn’t like. The piano I had been playing until high school and I refused to sell. The chair with the same cushion of light green color. They were like exactly the same when I left. Nothing has changed. My dogs were not there. Nobody was there. I started crying helplessly. I must have cried so loud I woke myself up. But there were no tears.

At that exact moment, I wish someone can hold me tight from back, and tell me any nightmare is all temporary. Tell me everything in front of me is worth every drop of my tears, fears, and regrets.

I guess that’s just the magic of nights, where all the weakness are intensified, and you are the vulnerable person in this world. When the sunrise came again and the day started, just like any other days, you know you’ll have to start being strong again, to protect yourself from any hurt again, because there’s a place you want to be and a life you want to live in the future.

I had two dogs. The first one passed away in 2016, and the other one in 2018, both after I left home. They rarely appeared in my dreams. Plus, I’m not that kind of person who dreamed a lot. They were alive, though, and I always believe that. We have eyes, and that’s probably the most important way for us to perceive this world. But we are also easily deceived by our eyes — when something never happened in front of our eyes, we won’t believe it. We don’t believe in eternal life, because what we saw was the growing old of every creatures and the decease of their flesh and their burying and disappearance. They never came back to life and stood in front of us. But I believe they were always there, somewhere we cannot see. Maybe in our dreams, maybe in our memories. That is exactly the proof that they are alive with us, because life is so majestic and powerful that it permeates everywhere and exists in every format possible and never stopped just because we define it as having functional organs and brain and a pumping heart and flowing blood through veins.

They are always here alive with us.