To Sleep(walk), Perchance to Dream

Vampires and collapsing ceilings and hot lava, oh my! Does this sound like the latest Hollywood attempt at drawing teen girls into a movie theater? Well it's not. Welcome to my dreams, and my life as a sleepwalker.

As promised, I'm doing a post on this topic because people seem to be fascinated with the fact that I sleepwalk. I had always thought it was something everyone did, but I have been proven wrong on many, many occasions. By proven wrong, I mean people squeal with glee and ask for crazy sleepwalking stories because they've "never known anyone who does that!" Yay me.

This started for me at a very young age. One of my first memories of sleepwalking was when I was probably six years old. I awoke to find myself standing in the living room, facing the babysitter who was sitting on the couch. She had this wide-eyed look on her face and didn't know what to say. I had no idea what I was doing there or what I had said to her. I panicked, asked her to have my parents come see me when they got home, and ran into my bedroom. My mother did come to see me when she returned home and heard about my glazed-over expression while talking to the babysitter. I remember being so embarrassed I think I begged my mom not to hire that girl again. Luckily, kids are resilient and we all moved on after my mom explained to the sitter what had happened.

Consider for a moment why I thought sleepwalking was not such an unusual activity. I had heard stories about my dad being a sleepwalker when he was younger. In fact there's quite an amusing tale of him waking up one morning and his dad telling him to clean out the garbage can. When he protested, he was told how he took a stroll through the house the previous night, all the while still asleep, and mistook the garbage can for a urinal. Hearing stories like this made me feel "normal" and like I wasn't alone. Plus, I have encountered a number of sleeptalkers throughout my life, so I figured they were walkers as well. Not so much. It turns out only 1%-15% of the population sleepwalks.

This is NOT what sleepwalkers look like.

Stop picturing those stereotypical sleepwalking scenes of people walking like zombies, arms outstretched and eyes shut. It's nothing like that. A lot of people don't even realize when they've encountered someone who's sleepwalking, because the afflicted sleeper can actually carry on a semi-intelligent conversation. Different people are affected differently, but most have open, glassy eyes and can carry out regular activities.  It's just that the brain isn't fully registering what's going on, and movements might be a little slow or jerky.

Yes, it can be an incredibly dangerous problem. For the most part, I have been lucky not to harm myself. Except once in college. Remember those loft beds in the dorms to make room for a desk underneath? Well I had one of those, but it was built a little too close to the ceiling for my subconscious to be comfortable with it. About a week in, I dreamed that spikes were coming down from the ceiling and falling down on me, so I rolled right off my loft to try to avoid them. By pure luck, that night I had moved the wooden chair that I typically used to climb up into bed; had it been there as it was every other night, I would have cracked my head open on the chair. Instead, I made the 6 foot tumble to the floor, knocked myself out, and bashed the heck out of my hip. I came to at some point in the middle of the night in so much pain I could barely walk. The doctor said I had bruised my hip and stressed some ligaments, which led to a two month limp, but thankfully that was the worst of it. After that incident, I lowered my loft a bit, and was ordered by friends and family to install rails on the side of my bed like a two-year-old. That's definitely the mature look I desired in college.

When I met the man who is now my husband, I made an interesting discovery about 8 months into our relationship. We went to Las Vegas on our first trip together, and the first night we had an episode. I woke up gasping with my arms over my head, trying to hold up the ceiling that was, of course, collapsing onto me. At that same moment, Chris was leaping over the bed because he thought it was hot lava. The simultaneous activity woke us both up, and perhaps that moment when we gazed with embarrassment into each other's eyes was the exact moment I knew we were meant to be.

Not only is Chris a sleepwalker, but he is far worse than I am. All of the triplets exhibit this trait to some degree, but I do think Chris is the worst. I can't tell you how often one of us wakes up in a panic and the other has to offer calming words. Chris tends to sleepwalk most when he's overtired or stressed out with work, and actually brings work into his dreams. He's an electrical engineer who works on nuclear power plants, and I've caught him trying to "rewire" our curtains or ceiling, solve issues with cooling towers and on many, many occasions, he jumps up and runs to the sink to splash water on his eyes because he thinks acid has splattered on him. The trouble comes when both of us sleepwalk at the same time and can't offer calming techniques, such as with the Las Vegas story. Or, you know, earlier this week when Chris sat bolt upright in bed yelling that some person/beast/ghost near our bedroom door was peering at us, and I then sat bolt upright and was convinced I saw it too. We huddled together, trying to figure out what to do, and then we both woke up. Yes, we're unusual.

While reading about sleepwalking, I learned that it's not uncommon in childhood, but most kids grow out of it. Good for them. Although scientists aren't fully certain why sleepwalking occurs, Chris' brother, who is a psychologist, explained to me what is believed to happen in those of us who don't grow out of it. Humans are wired to have paralysis when they're dreaming as a safety measure. Those of us who sleepwalk lack that nervous system mechanism that causes the paralysis. It really is a defect of sorts, and sleepwalkers exhibit this to varying degrees. Plus, sleepwalking has been identified as a genetic trait that runs in families. People who have one parent who does it are 45% more likely to sleepwalk, and those with two parents who do it are 60% more likely. As previously mentioned, my dad did it, my mom did as a child, Chris' brothers do it and Chris' mom has done it. If Chris and I ever had children, they'd be pretty much screwed.

I hope not to do something really dangerous while sleepwalking.

You might not think of certain safety measures if you're not a sleepwalker, but planning for sleep usually ends up being a larger event for us. When we were having air circulation issues in our home, Chris suggested keeping our bedroom door open a bit to let the warm air flow better throughout the house. At that suggestion, I looked at him with fear in my eyes and he simply said, "I know." What did he know? That "they" would come for us with the open door. "They" could be any creature, person or object that comes after us in our sleep and forces us to take action. Naturally, they're going to creep in through the open door. We often have to make adjustments with things left around the bedroom. Closet doors must be shut, or "they" will pop out of there during the night. No clothing strewn around the room, or the lumpy objects will manifest themselves in our sleepwalking episodes as intruders. Typically our incidents don't involve leaving the room except for a few extremely severe examples (often brought on by having a fever while sick), so we haven't had to worry about securing sharp objects.

I mentioned in a previous post that I can't watch horror movies, not because they scare me while awake, but because then "they" will come after me in my sleep. That can, and has, led to night terrors that include blood-curdling screams. When "The Grudge" came out a number of years ago, just seeing the commercial of that child ghoulie crawling across the floor was enough to cause a month's worth of sleepwalking. On more than one occasion, I found myself standing on my bed, wrapped in sheets as protection, because I "saw" the ghoulie coming at me across the floor and he was coming onto my bed next. I've had enough similar incidents throughout the years by accidentally seeing clips, or even trying to force myself to watch a whole movie to "get over it," that I now avoid horror movies altogether.

It's often difficult to wake up from sleepwalking episodes, and personally, it takes me quite a while to reach consciousness. I've noticed that both Chris and myself often think we're awake and fully functional when we're actually not. It's really disorienting and often frightening not just because most of the acted out dreams are nightmares, but because I don't know what's going on when I wake up. What's weird is that often I don't remember sleepwalking unless I wake up in the middle of it, or am reminded about it the next day. It really makes me wonder how many embarrassing performances I've put on at sleepovers. I guess it's just one of those quirks that makes me unique and provides great stories for people to laugh at.

Thanks for joining me on my sleepwalking journey. As a courtesy, if you ever see me wandering around when I'm supposed to be asleep, simply soothe me and send me back to bed. I'll try my best not to scream bloody murder because my subconscious morphed you into a vampire.