My Secret

Today I will share a secret. Something I have told no one.

From the age of four or five until adolescence, I used to have a dream. It came again and again. 

In this dream I am dying.

I see my body lying on a bed in a creamy white duvet. My eyes are closed. My hands are folded on my chest holding a white rose. I am wearing a white dress and white patent leather shoes. The sunlight coming through the window makes my hair shine. My face looks peaceful. A tall candle is in each corner of the room. The walls are red.

There are people around the bed. I feel that two of them are my parents. I see two other people who feel like my brother and sister. They are all kneeling, praying and crying. I can feel the sadness of each one.

Whenever I woke, the memory of the dream felt so real. Except the family—their bodies and their faces were completely different from my real family. I don’t even have a sister.

In those days, I lived in Mexico City with my parents and my baby brother. Life was good. I felt real love in my home. 

Every year we celebrate my birthday with a big party and many friends, a cake and piñata, candies and delicious food. I felt like the most spoiled child in the world. I felt safe. I wasn’t afraid of monsters or robbers.  

Whenever I woke up from my dream of dying and saw my mother’s face I was happy to be alive. I was happy to see her and listen to her voice. Each morning she would give me a cup of chocolate milk. And I would see my baby brother in his crib playing with his hands. And this would make me happy.

I loved my family and my life.

But the dream would return, three or four times a week. And it left me with the feeling that I didn’t belong in this house. That my parents were not my parents. And there was a family somewhere, missing me.

In adolescence, the dreams stopped.

Then, when I was twenty, I met a Roma woman and out of the blue, she looked into my eyes and said: “You are an old soul in a young body. You died in a car accident a long time ago, when you were a little child.”

I thought about my dream and wondered: was it actually a dream coming to me again and again? Or a memory?