I’ve had my fair share of dreams over the past few months. Ones I’ve tried to make sense of and ones I realized made no sense at all. I’ve always been able to remember my dreams quite vividly, which similar to having a good memory is both a blessing and a curse in its own regard. When I wake up from a not so obvious dream, I usually poke around and try to see what the general psychology behind said dream is.
Last night, or rather this morning, I had a dream that I was in the lobby of a big building with my dog, Russell. He and I were trying to go up to the 11th floor. I waited and waited for an elevator to come and as I did, the line behind me continued to grow of people queueing. Finally, an elevator appeared and I stepped on with Russ. He was scared and unsure so I crouched down and embraced him during the initial take-off. Because I had Russ and there were multiple people in the elevator, I asked the man standing by the buttons to hit floor 11. He attempted to hit the button and nothing happened. I asked him to try again and so he did. Nothing happened. Everybody else had their floor illuminated and I started to panic.
As people got off the elevator, I tried pressing 11 for myself to see if I had the magic touch. Again, nothing happened. The last person got off the elevator and I watched the doors close. Now, I couldn’t press any of the buttons. I was trapped. The elevator seemed to be stuck on this floor due to its lack of direction (how I can relate to this) and I didn’t know what to do. Then, the elevator started to plummet downwards very quickly and all at once. It created that feeling in your stomach when you were a kid and someone would go very fast over a hill in a car, or just before the rollercoaster dropped. I, again, knelt down to comfort and brace Russ and finally, it came to a stop. The door opened and dinged—alerting us that we were back at the lobby.
I looked up the meaning of this dream and I’m sure the undertones are glaringly obvious. Anxiety, feeling a loss of control, things are coming to a head, etc. Although, dream interpreters did put an interesting emphasis on the number floor you were trying to reach in the dream. In my case, it was the number 11. They said to take note of its significance and what role that number plays in your life. Of course, 11 is a special number to me for many reasons.
I’ve always identified 15 as my “lucky” number with no real evidence to support the claim. One day when I was a kid, I became obsessed with the number 15 and still consider this my number. There is no significance to the number other than I like it. But in reality, my real lucky number is 11. I was born on August 11 at 9:11. It’s the first repdigit in the entire numeral system! My name has two l’s that resemble the number 11. (Fun fact: In all three of my names, I have repeating double letters! ll, ee, tt including my initials which are kll) It might sound silly but the number has followed me around in many ways for most of my life.
The dream interpreters (lol) insist there’s something to this number in this particular dream. Is it because my birthday is coming up? Is it because 1+1 = 2? Who knows. But I do know that my life as of late has felt like being trapped on an elevator while attempting to press the floor I need to get off on only to be denied that right…Then subsequently plummeting at an accelerated/uncontrollable speed with my dog to an unknown fate.
So it goes!