not_me tender_square i am on the phone with a woman who is trying to settle up a final invoice for a party that is occurring. she keeps telling me that i am listed as being in charge of the party and i deny it. finally, i ask what name the invoice is under and it’s an in-law of mine named becky. as i am telling the woman this, and thinking about getting becky’s number from my cell phone, she appears in front of me. she trying to talk to me but i motion to the phone, then realize she’s the person i need and so i hand the phone over to her. becky says a couple of words to the woman and doesn’t hang up the phone. instead, she places it on a table and starts talking to me. she is warm and friendly and thanks me for handing things, saying that i seem to be managing the stress of life better than she does. i tell her i was overseeing things, yes, but that i would’ve done a better job had i known there was a party i was supposed to be in charge of. there were two very different parties occurring in the dream: indoors was a refined graduation celebration; outside was a rowdy party of aging bikers in bathing suits. at another point in the dream, a woman who is a friend i’ve never seen before tells me she needs to return my guitar before she leaves. her car is full of boxes that i have helped load. there was a sadness in our exchange, and i wondered if her and i had broken up. i told the friend, “no, the guitar is yours to keep. my mother gave it to me so that i could give it away.” the friend was grateful and we parted on good terms. * i had a neutral energy at the end of this dream, but after digging into the symbols and how they related to the inner dynamics of my life when it occurred at the end of august, i realized what a beautiful and powerful confirmation it was. i felt this was a dream talking about “wholeness,” about coming into self. i was the only figure who moved through both parties—the chaos and peace, the internal and external, the light and the dark—and i was observing and taking in information. i couldn’t control the external chaos but i was managing it on the phone and in the situation. when i told the woman on the cell phone, “that’s not me,” i realized upon waking that this statement was true, that *i have changed.* on a hunch, i did some research on “cells” in the human body and found that “every seven years or ten, we essentially become new people, because in that time, every cell has been replaced by a new cell” (livescience). phones in our dreams are often symbols of communication, a transmission we need to receive from another realm, necessary information that needs to be relayed. i am not the same woman i was at 30 when i went through a previous crisis; i’m light-years away from who that person was. i cried when the gravity of this message hit me and it still resonates. and all of this explains why i suddenly feel so different than where i was before; i thought i was solely experiencing a seven-year itch in my relationship, but these internal stirrings are about me becoming reacquainted with who i am and i am still learning. becky in the dream served as a reminder that even in the face of change, some facets of my personality remain constant; she was indicative of the energy i give to people that i often forget about, energy i have second-guessed throughout these changes. i have worried that i am hardening, or withdrawing from people. no so. not me. the guitar felt like i was handing over a tool to a trusted friend who would get greater use out of it than i would. to paraphrase lewis hyde, gifts are meant to be given away. i surrendered something i couldn’t play well; in my waking life, i quit music because i tried too hard to control what flowed through me and that’s why i turned to writing. the scene struck me as being about creativity, reminding me of a persona poem elizabeth knapp wrote about being kurt cobain shredding his lyre, she said, “what matters is the playing.” i hand the instrument over so this inner feminine figure can keep coming through, making music i hear and appreciate; her songs are the ones that have been flowing through my fingers when i write. she has been carrying me ever since. 211018 what's it to you? who go blather from