News from the Depths

Last night I dreamt that I had lost an entire hoard of cash.

I used to have this little envelope when I was a kid, you see. It was one of those business-reply envelopes that magazine companies usually send out whenever they want to encourage people to send a response. This one in particular was self-gummed and didn't need a stamp; I probably asked for an envelope one day, and was given the first thing in hand.

I put my pack-rat tendencies to good use and kept my savings in that envelope. I didn't spend a certain portion of my allowance, and I could never pass by a bank on a regular basis, so that little white envelope became my financial storage bin for a couple of years. I don't think that I ever had more than two thousand pesos in that envelope, but I only kept it around till I was about thirteen or so.

In this dream, however, not only was the envelope apparently still around, but I imagined that there was a good seventy-two thousand pesos tucked away inside. And it was missing from its usual hiding-place underneath an old dresser drawer, so I was tearing up the entire house looking for it.

I remember going through some very extreme measures. I was interrogating some faceless family members about the money, for one. I was tearing open the pillows, smashing the cabinets apart, even pulling down doors in case somebody had the foresight to hide the envelope in their frames. I was somewhere in the middle of sifting through the resulting wreckage when I finally woke up, sometime around noon on a fair Saturday morning.

As is usually the case with my most vivid dreams, I glanced at the Internet for some answers. This one caught my attention in particular (from Dreammoods.com):

To dream that you lose money, signifies temporary unhappiness in the home and a few setbacks in your affairs. You may be feeling weak, vulnerable, and out of control in your waking life. Additionally, you may be lacking ambition, power and self-esteem.

Yup, that sounds about right.

I've already mentioned that I'm going through a rough patch at the moment, although I'll spare everyone the sordid details. It's partly emotional, partly social, and partly psychological, if you must know, and if that doesn't make sense at all, that's because the cause is a conflux of different events happening at around the same time.

Times like these usually drain me of the desire to write. Fiction in particular becomes quite difficult to work out, although it makes a useful outlet for my frustrations. With that said, however, I'll still try to put together a few essays. Writing, after all, is a matter of scribbling things down, even when you're going through the blockiest phases of your life.

Let's not raise any illusions in the meantime, though: I'm not in a good turn right now, and it'll probably show. But the thing about all downturns is that there's likely to be an upturn somewhere — in this case, it'll just be a matter of time before I work it out.

Till then, however, may you all stay safe and happy out there.