Last night, I dreamt I had killed two children. I couldn’t remember how or why, only that I had done it—and that I was going to be caught. The dream filled me with a deep, almost existential guilt. I woke with that same sense of panic, as if the world was about to close in and strip me of my freedom forever.

At first, I didn’t want to admit to myself that I’d even had the dream. But as I sat with it through the day, something inside me began to unravel and make sense. These children weren’t real—they were symbolic. They represented innocence, wonder, and creativity. They trusted me. And somewhere along the way, I had silenced them.

I think I killed them to survive.

Throughout childhood and much of adulthood, it felt safer to suppress my natural sensitivity, vulnerability, and emotional intensity. I’ve always been deeply feeling—easily moved, easily hurt—and yet, I learned early on that showing those sides of myself invited shame, rejection, or mockery. My innocence became a liability. My sensitivity became something to hide. My imagination and spontaneity had to be contained so that I could blend in and stay safe.

In the dream, the terror of being caught—of everyone knowing—was overwhelming. That fear mirrors a deep-seated belief that if society truly saw me, in all my strangeness and sensitivity, I would be abandoned. But as an adult, I’m realizing that can’t really happen anymore. I’ve already survived being othered and excluded. I’m free now to resurrect what I once buried.

Those children are my vulnerability and my creativity—parts of me that were never wrong, just unprotected.

If I were to meet them again, I think they’d need gentleness. They’d need permission to exist without judgment, to speak in their own language, to be a little weird, a little tender, a little unguarded. They’d need me to hold them with love rather than shame.

This dream, as dark as it was, felt like an invitation. A reminder that I don’t need to keep hiding from my own softness. That my freedom isn’t found in control, but in allowing all of myself to live again.

Maybe the real act of resurrection isn’t bringing something back from the dead—it’s finally giving it room to breathe.