Dream: Fast Forward to Year 2016

Have you ever wondered how it would feel like to lose your memory for a few years?

Imagine a total blackout – lasting for seven years! How would you feel like if you suddenly found yourself in a completely foreign environment, having no idea how you got there, just like what would happen after some heavy partying… except, in this case, you’d find out it’s year 2016?

Nope, I’ve never thought about it either, until last night.

Last night, I had a very eerie dream where I found myself in a situation like that. The dream is still giving me the creeps. In the dream, I had to find out what I had been up to for the last seven years, beginning with the basics: was I married, did I have kids, where I was working, and so on. Yeah, I bet you’d get the creeps, too.

White and Yellow Dream House

In the dream, I found myself inside a house I didn’t recognize. At the same time, however, the house felt oddly familiar, although I was sure I had never seen it before. I was alone in the house and I wondered whose it was and why I was there.

After some poking around, I gathered it was a smallish townhouse, with shiny parquet floors and two or three bedrooms. The house was clean, modern and a bit sterile, yet it was cozy enough to call it home.

The house was decorated with warm and light colors: white, beige and yellow. All the wooden surfaces, including the parquet flooring, were made from light wood with a hint of orange. The thin, white curtains let in just the right amount of sunlight to make the whole house bathe in yellow and white light, very bright but not so bright it would hurt the eyes. Apparently, it was a very sunny day outside.

I heard a friend (or a spirit guide, I never actually saw her in the dream) ask me, “Don’t you recognize this house? It’s your own home.”

I was puzzled. Very puzzled. I was living here? How did that happen?

Who Am I?

Slowly, I was able to gather I had completely lost my memory for years. The last thing I remembered was living in 2009 but this was somewhere in the… future.

I found myself in the middle of a completely alien life – a life I had created myself. While I was puzzled and a bit creeped out, I was also excited and curious. I didn’t feel that I had lost all those years I didn’t remember, I felt I had been fast forwarded to the future! OMG it’s the future, I’m living in the future!

Excited, I began to examine the life I was leading now: was I still married? Did I have kids? Did I ever graduate? Where was I – which country, which town? Hell, what year was it? How did this memory loss happen?

Trying to Live the New Life

While trying to figure out how to live this life and what to do next, my friend/guide helped me get started. I had to do some everyday stuff, like shopping for groceries. Just like my home, the grocery store felt very familiar, although I didn’t remember seeing it before. The cashier, a tall young man, apparently knew me because he chatted with me for a while. It felt so odd – I should know that guy?

At home again, I found a pack of nicotine gum I had apparently bought. My guide told me to put it away because if my husband finds it, “He’ll yell at you for being addicted to that stuff again.” So I was married? Yes. My guide pointed at a man who was mowing the lawn in the backyard. I was so happy to recognize him – he was the same guy I remembered being married to! It meant our marriage had been successful so far, and I was happy because now I knew there was at least one person in my life I already knew and loved.

I also tried to find out if I had kids, but apparently I didn’t. While it didn’t surprise me at all (I don’t really want kids) it made me feel a little sad, wistful and lonely. The house felt so empty. Was it the right decision, after all?

Memories in the Closet

I wasn’t too concerned about the pack of nicotine gum, although apparently I was addicted to it and my hubby wasn’t too pleased about it. I popped a gum in my mouth and tucked the package away in a bedroom closet so it wouldn’t upset my hubby.

In the closet, I found a lot of interesting stuff: memories from the past, like a bunch of photos and my old toys. I began checking the stuff out. Maybe these things would shed some light on who I was now.

I found my old student overalls (the “official” party uniform of Finnish college students) and tried them on. The overalls were the most familiar thing I had touched so far, because the last time I remembered, I was still a student wearing them. I began wondering if I had finally graduated. I hoped so because I wanted to be done with school already.

The Wealthy College Dropout

I knew I’d find my diploma in a closet, located in the hall of our house. In the hall, I also found my wallet that seemed to be bulging with money, and I took it with me. I found my diploma, which I knew was an official listing of all my academic achievements.

Nope, I hadn’t graduated. I wondered what had happened to my engineering studies. Was I still in college? Had I become a big time loser? Did I have a job? Did my hubby have a job? Judging by the house we were living in, it appeared we were leading a secure middle-class life: we weren’t rich by any means, but we weren’t struggling either. We had enough money to afford everything we needed or wanted.

At this point, I asked my guide what year it was. 2016, she replied. Wow, a lot of time had passed. I remembered that in 2009, my hubby and I were planning to move abroad (yes, we’re really planning to move abroad IRL) and began wondering what had happened. Did we move? I learned this home of ours was in Finland, so it seemed we hadn’t moved abroad after all.

I looked inside my wallet and found a lot of coins, mostly 10 and 5 cents. Most of them weren’t Finnish euros, they were from other EU countries. That made me realize we had, indeed, been living abroad for some time. Because there were still so many foreign coins in my wallet, I figured we had recently moved back in Finland. Where had we lived in? Why had we moved back in Finland? Was there a specific reason – were we needed here for something important?

The Aftermath

At this point, I woke up, a little creeped out. It felt as if I had peeked into the future. 2016? Wow, it’s a lot of time. I’ll be over 30 years old then. What else will happen? Will this dream come true? (I wouldn’t mind if it did… without the memory loss of course. That house looked nice.

It seems the dream was packed with symbolism. What was that house, totally alien to me? What did the words of my guide mean? “Don’t you recognize this house? It’s your own home.” Why was the house filled with that bright light? What was that bedroom closet, filled with memories? Or the wallet, full of coins?

The dream was just so totally eerie. In the dream, I felt as if I had been thrown into a completely alien life… yet it was my life and I had to live it. Everything I was seeing around me was a result of choices and decisions I had made. I had to look back and figure out what sort of decisions I had made and why I had made them. I had to get to know myself.

Maybe that’s what made the dream so creepy. I didn’t know myself anymore. For seven years, I had been someone I didn’t remember being. I didn’t know who I was!