My weird night-time wanderings.

I’m a bit of a sleep-walker.

It’s been a mild issue for me for as long as I can remember.  I’m not an “extreme” sleep-walker, by any means – I can go months, even YEARS, without any major night-time wanderings or incidents happening, but when they DO happen, they always end up baffling me.

Where the mind goes and what the mind does when one is asleep is kind of frightening.  Even when it’s just silly little things.

My family has stories of my late-night escapades from when I was younger – talking in my sleep (though I STILL don’t believe my siblings when they say I woke them one night calling out for hamburgers and hot dogs… it’s just too easy to pick on the fat sister, isn’t it??); getting up one night flanked in my comforter to “fix the TV for the kids” while my parents were still up watching TV… funny little stories like that.

Oh!  I won the Junior Public Speaking contest at my high school when I was in Grade 7 with a speech on nightmares, which I started off by telling one of my freakier night terror episodes.  In my dream, I was in a swamp with my neighbours and their baby girl (who is now grown up and has her own baby girl, which strikes me as freakier than this old dream now lol), and there was a giant snake in the swamp that we were all trying to stay away from.  But the snake suddenly lunged at the baby and I jumped in between them, and the snake ended up biting my hand.  When I woke, up, I could still feel the “snake” biting me… it turned out, my right hand was clamped down on my left hand, nails digging in so hard they almost drew blood.

When I had roommates in my current house, my friend Sue was in the room across the hall from me, and I ended up disturbing her one night, unbeknownst to me.  She said she woke up to see me walking around in her room, trying to open her closet.  Then I attempted to climb into her bed.  Realizing I was sleep-walking, and that it’s bad to wake a sleep-walker, she simply rolled over to make room for me, but she said I only stayed for a minute before I got up and left again.

After she told me this story – I was impressed with how she handled it, I think I would have screamed! – it bothered me.  I didn’t want my roomies to be worried that I was going to barge in on them in the middle of the night like that!  The following night, I closed my bedroom door, and put my big jar that I throw loose change into in front of the door in the hopes that it would “keep me in”.

The following day, the roomies had no sleep-walking tales to report, thank God – but I had definitely been up wandering, because the change jar was now in the middle of my room, and the soap dispenser from the bathroom was on my dresser.  dun dun dunnnnnnn….

Aside from little night-time things happening (I sometimes wake up convinced my bed is breaking and I have to jump out, or I often wake up because I have spiders in my room and I chase them), the only other major incident that has occured since then was the night I summer-saulted out of bed.

That one was definitely the scariest for me.  By far.  And I still say a little prayer every night before going to sleep:  “Please, Lord, don’t let me fall out of bed tonight.”

Last night was the first time I’ve had an “incident” since that one, and thankfully, it was more funny than scary!

I’m not sure what time it was, but I awoke feeling very hot, and pissed off that I had to share my bed.  Yes, someone was in my bed.  You would think that would scare me, but no, I was just annoyed and figured I’d better move to give this person more room.  So I moved to the spare room.  And spent the night sleeping in my old bed which is not as comfortable, and in a room with no fans or anything, and a pillow that left me with a crick in my neck.  I woke to the sound of my alarm going off across the hall at 5:40 this morning.

And even then, my first thought was that my alarm was going to waken whoever was sleeping in my bed.

Seriously.

It honestly took me a minute or two to realize that there was nobody in my bed.  And what the hell… I just spent an entire night tossing and turning in my old bed in a hot, stuffy room with an uncomfortable pillow for NO FRIGGIN REASON?!  Sonofa…

When I crossed the hall back into my room, I glanced at the bed, and saw my big stuffed dog Zwillian that I sleep with lying right where the “someone” had been sleeping.

So yeah.  I spent the night sleeping in the spare room in my old bed in less-than-comfortable circumstances because of Zwillian.

Lord love a duck.