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For a while now, I've had a tendency to sleepwalk/talk. While asleep, I sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, imagine things that aren't there. I was beginning to think that I must be going insane, but I was reassured when I discovered that my mother had the same problem, so genetics are to blame =). I shall provide two instances when I was asleep and acted like a complete lunatic.
In the first one, I remember everything that happened. I didn't wake up, but I knew what was going on... which is just strange.
I sat up and thought there was an alligator at the foot of my bed. Of course, I became extremely scared and jumped out of bed. Now, a normal person would wonder how on earth an alligator got to the foot of my bed (I live on the 15th floor of an apartment building). But being the unusual person that I am, I proceeded to go into my closet and take out my school skirt, which I put on. Going back to the bed, I grabbed the two opposite ends of my blanket and stripped my bed. When I was completely certain that the alligator was gone, I spread the blanket back on the bed, took off my school skirt, lay back down, and continued sleeping.
Laughing at me yet? Well, here's another. Now, this one I remember only vaguely and would have totally forgotten if my mother hadn't laughed at me and told me what had happened the day after it occurred.
I recently went on a ten-day cruise. Our cabin was set up so that I got a pull-out couch (which wasn't very pull-out like because it unfolded onto the floor, becoming just a bunch of pillows on the floor) and a long curtain divided the room during the night, separating my "pull-out" bed from my parents' regular bed. The foot of my "pull-out" bed was at the side of their bed, but since the barrier came in between, we couldn't see each other. SO, during the night, my mother awoke startled and saw the curtain flopping around. The flopping came from the bottom of the curtain, where the foot of my bed was (yes, the foot of my bed, yet again. And no, I did not have any bad experiences at the foot of my bed when I was a child). My mother bent down and saw my head poke through the bottom of the curtain, followed by my hands, which grabbed her slippers. I held the slippers to my chest like they were my long lost baby (even though I'm a bit too young to be having a baby any time soon). My mother watched me do this, and between her laughs, gently tried to convince me to let them go. My only response was "But I lost it! I need it! Let me keep it!" (I'm thinking now that I must have been dreaming I was Gollum, although I have my doubts). My mother then said, "Don't worry, I'll guard it for you very carefully." I replied, "You promise?" "Yes, sweetheart. Go back to sleep." "Okay, Mommy." And then I plopped back down and continued with whatever the hell I was dreaming about.
My mother once told me that in her sleep, she took apart an entire closet in search of a lizard that she could have sworn went into it. Of course, that doesn't help my situation at all, and my parents are now debating whether or not they need to Arya-proof my balcony door so that I don't sleep walk onto the terrace and over the balcony by mistake. *Sighs* are my mother and I the only ones that this happens to? Or are there other crazy sleepwalker dreamers out there?
posted
I don't think a bell would help if I was no longer in the apartment =P. Thanks, I hope so too! (((Javert)))
Posts: 68 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
My brother had similar experiences, though they were most common when he had a minor fever.
He had an even worse habit. He would call out to me in the middle of the night, waking me from my sleep. I would answer. Then he would mumbles something and go back to sleep.
I never did learn what was worth waking me up for.
My wife's grandmother is doing the same thing you are doing, but when she bumps into a wall or falls down, she breaks a bone.
You have a fine line to walk, between making it so you don't fall off your balcony, and still being able to get to your balcony in case of a fire.
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I don't exactly sleepwalk, but I sometimes have very physical reactions to specific things in dreams. No, not sexual, but I'm still not giving details here.
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I used to sleep walk a lot when younger. Had an upstairs bedroom. Once I got up, went down the stairs (which awoke grandma, and she came out to see what I was doing) and I proceeded to the go sit on the kitchen trash can. She asked what I was doing, and I said, "going to the bathroom".
I don't remember any of it at all.
But I would do stuff like that all the time -- get up and turn on the light, then turn it back off, etc.
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When I was a kid I used to sleepwalk occasionally, but I haven't done it in probably 28 years. Last night, though, I actually struck out in my sleep. In my dream I was climbing a ladder, and Gollum sprang out of a hole in the cliff wall I was trying to get to the top of and tried to push my ladder over. I lunged at him, trying to bludgeon him back into his hole, and the motion of my striking out in real life woke me up. I'm glad I happened to be facing away from my wife, with her holding me instead of vice versa!
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I used to sleep walk all the time when I was little. The bad part is that I slept on the top bunk bed, making for some painful dreams.
Anyways, Arya, I don't see how your parents, or you, wouldn't lock your balcony door in some fashion that you couldn't open it while you were asleep.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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My balcony door is locked. I'm not sure if I can unlock it while asleep. Apparently I can do a lot of other things, so what's stopping me from doing that?
Posts: 68 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I don't think I walk in my sleep, but from time to time I wake up and say something and go back to sleep. Actually, I'm pretty sure I have the beginnings of apnea, so I'll stop breathing, my roommate will get worried and wake me up, I'll say something, and then I'll go back to sleep.
Although my little sister sleepwalks sometimes...
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I talk in my sleep, or used to--at least, I once called out that someone had broken my Fisher-Price record player.
Walking (or making other motions) in my sleep is unusual for me--in fact, I often wake up with pressure marks on my knees because I haven't twitched all night. But it does happen. I once dreamed that I got up to stand in front of the mirror, and awoke to find I was indeed standing in front of the mirror.
Stranger still, once when I was in a bunkbed I amused myself by "standing on the ceiling"--lifting up my legs so that I was braced between the bed and the ceiling. I can't imagine that I went to sleep in that position, so I must have done it again in my sleep. I dreamed that a girl from one of my classes accosted me with a sword and stabbed me in the back repeatedly; on finally waking, I found that I had been "standing" and fallen over into the corner, twisting my back into the most awkward angle imaginable--unless you count broken, of course.
With the exception of a few times when I dreamed of waking up, however, I nearly always know the difference between waking and sleeping. I tend to wake suddenly and abruptly, and while I may be tired afterwards I am never in that half-asleep drowsy state--at least, not consciously.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Yeah, that happens to me also. Once, I awoke during one of these nighttime-strolls of mine, if you can call it that, and I wondered how I had gotten there and why on earth I had thought that what I was imagining was real. Usually, though, I remain asleep throughout everything.
Posts: 68 | Registered: Jan 2004
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One night, my dad woke up to get some water, and noticed the light was on in the kitchen. When he went to see who was up, he found me (I was 6 or 7 at the time). I had taken the bread out of the bread drawer and was laying the slices out on the table, one by one, like tiles.
"Becky, what are you doing?" he asked me.
I replied, "This is good bread. We should have more bread like this."
At this point, he decided I was sleepwalking, and after agreeing that it was very good bread, suggested I go back to bed. I agreed easily enough, and so he led me back to my room and then returned to the kitchen to put away the bread.
Posts: 188 | Registered: Dec 2002
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When my old boss Dan first got married, he and his wife went to live in a small town in Alabama where he was working at a jobsite all day building huge tanks. He was the engineer and there were a lot of workmen working under him. It was a very physically tiring job, in the hot sun all day doing hard labor, working overtime, and starting very early in the morning. So he would fall asleep right after supper and she would stay awake watching tv, turned down low so as not to disturb him. One night he woke up and she was crying and packing her stuff. She told him she was leaving him. He couldn't imagine what was the problem.
Turns out night after night he had been sitting up in his sleep and screaming profanity at her, saying she was making too much noise while he was trying to sleep. He had no idea he was doing it, and she had no idea he wasn't awake.
His family knew that he often sleep-walked or talked in his sleep but he had never told his new wife that, I guess because he was embarrassed for her to know that or something though how he expected to hide it from her I'm not sure. I guess it's a guy thing.
Anyway, they nearly got divorced because she thought he was this abusive person, and she didn't think she needed to explain to him what was happening, since she had no idea he wasn't fully aware of what he had done. He figured out later that it was because he was hearing all the swearing all day long that the workmen do, and he was under a lot of pressure, and it was somehow coming out in his sleep.
<laughs> Luckily she must have told him what upset her so, and he realized what was happening and the marriage was saved!
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(I hope I'm not that bad when I'm sleeping.. I mean, I have been known for the occasional cursing at my mom or dad while they pass by my room, but nothing to that extent. )
Posts: 68 | Registered: Jan 2004
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