There aren’t a lot of dreams I remember from the first part of my life. A few of them are scatterbrained, a lot of them are more of a feeling than actually remembering a few details. This was one of them, and it turns out was a deep reflection on what was actually going on inside of me.
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These specific dreams started after the summer of 2009. I’d get them about once a month, although in September I got them weekly. They continued all the way up to the spring of 2010. I believe I had it once in 2011, and a few times in 2012. I occasionally have this dream in varying degrees up to this day, but they’re very few and rare between.
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The concept was simple. I’m either be in bed or by myself someplace, and my cell phone would ring. The Caller ID would show someone’s name that I’d know, and I’d just answer the phone. All but once there’s silence on the other end, and I’d wake up in real life vocally going “Hello?”
The most iconic one I do remember was October 2009 at some point. I was on the driveway in front of the house, in the dead of night. The sky was completely clear, and stars were everywhere. My phone went off and I saw that the ID showed someone I was familiar with, that I’d only met a year before..
I answered and heard said person super happy, telling me “Hey! How’s it going?”
“I’m doing fine. How about you?”
No other response came. I sat there, waiting for that same happy voice to tell me about herself. I thought I got cut off, so I decide to speak on my own.
“Hello?”
On the second time, I wake up in my bed, about 7ish or so in the morning. It was not later in the day (I was sleeping in around that time), but it had jarred me awake to an earlier period. I realized I had spoken the 2nd “Hello?” out loud.
That specific instance really bothered me, and I felt like I was tricked. I missed something, I couldn’t have it in real life and it’d only happen in my dreams. Emotionally crushed was an understatement. I remember wanting to cry because the experience seemed so real, and I knew that it was something that’d never happen in real life. Nor was it something that I experienced, either.
The person in question also never called me out of the blue for any reason whatsoever, so I especially felt I was gypped out of something positive.
I remember making a note that nobody had called me since my graduation, 138 days and counting according to an old Facebook status update. The first call I got from someone that wasn’t my immediate family or a job application was some telemarketer.
I likened it to the movie Contact, in which Ellie was listening out to the void for someone to reach out. I had stopped reaching out to people for a number of reasons, just trying to align myself to the right direction. Sure I was still lonely and isolated, but I had been burned numerous times at this point. I realized if someone was interested in me, they’d reach out.
My expectations dried up when not a single person in my social circle called me for 4+ months.
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As mentioned before, I occasionally still get this dream twenty four years later; although it’s changed with the times. The biggest changes are the phone, and I have longer conversations with whoever’s on the other end.
One instance I even was talking to myself (which was weird hearing my own voice). It was an uncanny experience if not more.
What does it mean?
This is the part where I do my best to sort out and speculate what my dreams mean. And for once, I actually have a professional opinion on this! Thanks ETSU counselor wherever you are now.
According to them, my subconscious wanted to connect to someone, really bad. Enough that I was imagining people calling me. I could not comprehend this in real life, especially if I was not experiencing it. This was my way of trying to figure it out.
And not for the lack of trying, mind you. Before the era of unlimited texting, calling was an absolute necessity. Phone companies penalized you $1/text if you were not on a texting plan, and my sister was the only one in the house who had such a plan at the time. I don’t joke about it when I was unleashed to iMessage in 2011, and then got to experience texting fully in 2014. By then, my social circle had taken another dip.
So talking to someone, reaching out to them with my voice is something I’ve struggled with over the years. This is also the conclusion that the counselor came up with as well.
His solution? Call two people every week. And I followed this to the best of my ability for about a month, till school ended. Both peeps were from my Japanese language class the previous semester.
After that period, I never talked to both on the phone again. One just texted me for a bit before moving online, and another just vanished completely and I have no idea where they went. The former moved to Japan and is an ESL teacher.
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Do I take phone calls now? Depends. If you’re someone I want to talk to, I’ll take a phone call. You may need a GDO (shoutout to Stargate fans) to let a friendly signal get picked up, but I say the closest modern equivalent is Discord.
Still, there’s nothing like picking up the smartphone and dialing a number, knowing that someone will answer on the other end.
I see this especially in the past few years after COVID. Studies have come out to say how people were mentally affected by not seeing people, or using their voice in actual conversations. I think this did bother me a bit, and still does now.
For me specifically, this means to talk to friends with my voice. This doesn’t mean ‘meet n’ greet’ customers, or do something with customer service. This is to share things with buddies, and to socialize. Without stress, worry and closing one’s self off to share something.
This is why I do a lot of communication with my writing, and why I type so long texts or big posts like this. I know the current climate of people not wanting to read, but it’s been my practiced form of communication over the years. A byproduct of evolution of not being able to regularly talk to someone with my voice, is me expressing myself in long typed word blocks online.
And as I get older and see the world change, I see that I’m one of the fewer people that stand out like this. Nobody wants to voice chat, nobody wants to meet up anymore. Tons of people are married and moved on with their life. Where I’ve been living hasn’t had a good track record to support someone like me growing up.
I believe I saw this a long ways off; I wasn’t sure how, but it’d be a lot more difficult to connect to people when I was older. That’s why I tried so hard to connect with someone in my early 20s. Unfortunately it looked like that effort was wasted or misdirected.
The only thing I can do now is move forward with the information I know, and be appreciative of the dreams I had to experience something. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a reality one day.
Until then, the comms beacon is open for someone who hasn’t been squirreled away for the rest of their life in social obligations.
