The Loneliest People

I find myself on a campus. I see a campus tour in progress, so I get in the group and become part of it on the sly. I hear scraps of information on older classes and former students, and I try to hear names I'd be familiar with, but there are none. Where are they? I am in my dorm room. I come back to my computer. It is a mess of boxes and cords, it looks like I moved some of this around some earlier. I open all my chat programs. I don't see anyone on. Then some come on some, and I wait for them to contact me, because then they will want to talk to me. Nobody does. I go to contact them and after I send the message, they go on "Away" or "Do Not Disturb" or seem to sign off. Not a single one stays on to talk to me. This makes me sad in a complicated way. I should be OK with people not wanting to talk to me. I am good on my own. I have done no harm, have I? Maybe I'm just not good at being friends. Maybe my dad was right about me, and I have Asperger's Syndrome or something that does this to me. To other people -- denying them my friendship? I fiddle with the boxes and tangled cords. I find an extra mouse on the floor and realize it is not the mouse I am using, but I still go about trying to untangle the cords. Thus occupied, I miss a call on my cell phone. I had totally forgotten I even had a phone until now! I go over to it but as soon as I touch it it stops ringing. I look up the call log and dial the last number who called me. It's a woman on the other line. we say hi, then I ask pardon who is this? She says she just called me not too long ago, but we hardly talk so she kind of understands. She says wait and plays me a song over the phone. It has lyrics. It was about promise hopes dreams connection wanted but denied. Meanwhile I had time to think of who this is. When the song is over I ask if she was the one who gave me a shortened form of her name ... is this Steph? (meanwhile during this call somehow I have moved from inside to being under a tree) She replies, "did you listen to the song, or were you just trying to recall my name?" "Both," I answered. She acted as if I was being selfish ... how is that selfish I was listening to YOUR song and thinking of YOUR name. She ignored me and played another song. I said "I'd like it if we talked, please." "Shh, maybe after this song." A couple guys came up to me asking people if they wanted to try a dish. The last ones denied it and walked hurriedly one. They next came to me. They said it was a French breakfast, called "cobb". It looked like a kind of pulled meat and bread and a sauce or something. I said I would like to try it. Then they told me they had run out of clean forks. I said I had one in my dorm room. It is right near the front so it won't take me long to go get it and come back. I have trouble leaving though. I make sure i have everything, but a few steps away I don't know where my cell phone is. I search my hands .. nope! I search my pockets as I walk back to where I was. Lots of things in my pockets. An MP3 player, a e-book reader, a portable movie player ... keys maybe, a wallet, all kinds of stuff, but no phone -- wait there it is. I listen and see I have not lost the line with "Steph" The song is still playing. I go inside and go to the right and go through a door. Wait, this isn't right. There are all females in here. I start to walk forward thinking this has to be a mistake. No one stops me. Suddenly I see a scene a few feet down the hallway. This woman storms off away from this other woman, saying she gives the worst advice! I feel awkward so I just want to get out of there. I turn around to go back the way I came. The woman who "gave bad advice" says "you give good advice, maybe you could go talk to her, or tell me if I did wrong." but I pretend she wasn't talking to me. She didn't say my name, and I just wanted OUT OF THERE. So I come to the narrow entry way and a woman is leaning diagonal in it blocking it, talking on the phone I think. I duck under her just as she is moving to just be on the side I am ducking under. I brush her and say I'm sorry and move on my way. She didn't seem to mind. She says hi after me, but I am already out. Now I am walking through what must be the male's side. I go into a large open room, there a man is giving new people a tour. I turn on the light in here and move on. I go through the double doors and into a narrow hallway. It is very narrow and very dark. I cannot find the switch here. I keep moving forward nevertheless in this dark narrow hallway with walls pushing my shoulders in compressing me. Then I see another set of double doors at the far end. I hear voices, I see light. I come through the doors, I push through, and finally stumble out into another cavernous room. Everybody seems new and strange, everything in here seems unfamiliar and I am kind of curious but I just want to get to my dorm room already. This place has partitions separating a big space into smaller areas. One place is a place to show movies on a screen. I walk down the aisle and back up again, big women in wheel chairs move out of my way. Then I get to t he top again and i have to go down this ramp to get out, but it is blocked by big women sitting on it. We talk and they move just enough for me to squeeze past. Next I get to another hallway made form partitions and I think my dorm room may be just after this, but again I have big women in my way, some in wheel chairs, so I have to manouvre past them. I get to my room again. This is odd. It is my room, but not at the same time. Therefore I get feelings of relief for getting "home" again; but at the same time both the journey back and parts of the room itself seem foreign. I start as I remember I am supposed to be looking for a fork and I find it, but then I start again as I remember I am also supposed to be listening to the cell phone. It's gone missing again. I look around all over the place. I end up finding a weird object I have never seen before. It is a small black cube. It open in half in two thick halves. I realize it is a phone, but certainly it is not mine, where did I get it? I start to close it as it rings, but it is too far to closing up so I lost the call. It says "DROIIIIID" just like my phone and buzzes in my hand just like my phone. Huh ... so I open it and it has a message saying i missed a call hit the up button to hear it. so I did. It's "Steph", and she is apologizing for not really talking to me. When I hit the "call back" button I wake up and lose the dream. NOTES: I just heard a song on a random iTunes Ambient radio station "air-lounge" by Kings of Convenience called "Misread" that sounded a lot like the second song she played on the phone. Here is the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOxE7IRizjI Here are the lyrics: http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858513064/ I love the line: "How come no-one told me, All throughout history, The loneliest people, were the ones who always spoke the truth." That is very true, in my life anyway. I also feel the same way as this other comment: "You know, they say the meaning of the song is the meaning to you. To me its not about a girlfriend neccessarily, it's about relationships with people in general. The person this song is about is a very honest and up front person. He has a habit of picking out peoples flaws and letting them know about it with honest intentions, but the other person gets hurt and misunderstands his intentions of trying to be the best friend you'll ever meet. A friend that will be brutally honest simply becuase of the fact that he wants to make you an even better person. Long story short, he burns a bridge because the other person doesn't get it." So, it is curious that a song that sounded a lot like a song I heard in my dream turns out to have meaning in the dream I had! I do not lose people because I don't try to be friends, I do not lose people because I am not listening. I lose them because I listen all too well and I'm honest and look for the bigger picture, looking for what is important, and I lose them to truth, to honesty, to trying to be the best friend I can be. So, by now, I reach out but also hold back. Which makes me OK being alone I like it, but at the same time lonely and sad because I am not able to be friends to people and help them help themselves to really shine! With us all shining healed and looking at the bigger picture and not letting society and GROUPS tell us how we are supposed to act or care for then we could be living in a place of true Freedom! But the vast majority of people would rather remain chained to deceptions. What else is there to do here anyway? It is built to do that. *sigh*