Godzilla Came in a Dream to Beat My Anger
Sometimes you find in dreams what you can’t find in reality. Once in a while you need a nightmare to find yourself.
It could pass like another crazy dream. After all, who hasn’t had a dream where Godzilla chases you and you run between the streets of a big city?
In those days I was going to therapy. Well, to psychoanalysis. You know, the talk therapy invented by Freud where you end on a divan and tell your dreams to the psychoanalyst. And like in a Woody Allen’s movie, there I was, telling my recent monster’s nightmare to my therapist.
In this dream, I was walking on the street when Godzilla showed up. I was afraid, of course. I ran. But Godzilla didn’t stop chasing me. Like in the movies and cartoons, it didn’t say a word, it was mute. My fear increased and desperation came in. I don’t know how but I ended up running on the city buildings' rooftops.
A lot of things had been happening in my life. I got married to my first wife, I had a new job and a new position in a very big company, and I was having a hard time dealing with leaving my love for philosophy, fine arts and writing, in exchange for a successful life as an executive.
Running away from Godzilla, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, I saw a group of little children on the corner of a building’s top not far from me. They were not running. In fact, to my surprise, they were trying to get Godzilla's attention. They had a blackboard and were showing a message to the monster.
I was in therapy for what you can call anger management. I used to be very angry a couple of days of the week. Any other day I was furious. The rest of the time I was just plain angry. I started going to psychoanalysis because it was the only kind of treatment I knew. Well, psychoanalysis and psychiatry, but I didn’t want to take meds. Besides, I had studied Philosophy and had read Freud, so it was the obvious choice back then.
The dream finished there. With the kids trying to show a message to Godzilla written on a blackboard. I never knew what was written on it. But it didn’t matter because what the dream revealed was more important than words. I just had to connect the dots.
It was some sessions after I told my dream to the psychoanalyst when I had the answer. I was talking about the time I taught a couple of writing classes to elementary students when I was just finishing high school. I was young and it was difficult because I didn’t have any training or experience teaching kids of that age. My youngest brother—I told my therapist—was in the same elementary school, but in a different grade. As soon as my students discovered that I had a brother and who he was, they began calling him Godzooky…
And then, in a flash, I remembered. They called my youngest brother Godzooky because he was the younger version of Godzilla! And I was Godzilla!
Back then, there was this Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon with Godzilla in it, and it had a little nephew called Godzooky.
Why did they call me Godzilla? Because in my desperation to teach writing classes to little children I got angry several times. When they saw my anger they said I was like Godzilla.
I didn’t remember this when I had the dream I told my psychoanalyst.
When you have an insight, a lot of data gets connected, patterns emerge and information flows. Knowledge and wisdom come immediately after.
I was Godzilla, therefore, I was running away from myself, and I was chasing myself.
Beyond the anger I was showing to the city, there were these little children without fear to me, trying to get my attention to a message on a blackboard.
And the most important of all things, I realized that my anger wasn’t a product of the life I was living then but a part of me since I was very young.
The children of the dream knew that behind that monster was someone able to read the written words. In a way, the words could save me from being a monster.
Or the children were teaching me how to listen and talk to a monster. To my monster.
When you have an insight, a lot of data gets connected, patterns emerge and information flows. Knowledge and wisdom come immediately after.
But better than that, I discovered, not just that I was the man running from the monster and the monster itself, but I was also the children, the city, the buildings, the blackboard…
My brain creates my dreams. All the characters, objects or scenes in a dream come from the same place: my mind. I don’t dream of my mom or an old friend, or my old neighborhood or an old toy. Everyone and everything in a dream are a version of myself.
I was the children trying to help me from the monster I was becoming. I was telling myself about leaving my fears, break my mutism, stop anger, and start using words…
I was the monster’s call and I was its answer.
