-She
won't expect a thing, I
whisper.
Still
lying down, I slowly reach my hand across. My fingers run across over
her face, and then I jump up, and press my hands down, covering her
mouth and nose. She struggles for a moment, and then throws me off.
*
As she tells me this in the morning, I don't know what to think. Did this really happen? How could it have?
My
memories of the night had been staying in, watching a movie, cooking
dinner, splitting a bottle of wine, going to bed fairly early, and
getting a good night's sleep. Dreamless, even.
I'd
of course heard countless stories about people doing all sorts of
things while sleepwalking. And yet I'd never had any experience of
it. Roommates, girlfriends... none of them have ever said I'd done
similar things. I've always been a fairly light sleeper, and I toss
and turn somewhat, but never anything even remotely close to this
act.
To
even call it an “act” has the horrifying implication that it had
a motive, that it had intention. I know I can't blame myself for what
I've done in my sleep. But it's still difficult to admit that I'd
been violent in my sleep, especially as someone who doesn't really
have violent tendencies. And I know that if I do admit it, while I
won't become a pariah, I'll become vaguely suspect in some way. It is
tantamount to making visible the albatross around my neck.
And
regardless of any question of motivation, it makes the last few
moments before falling asleep a bit more tense, a bit more nervous.
The
fear of sleep is something pretty innate, and it's few people who
haven't experienced it to some degree. Because when you are lying
there in the darkness, you are prone, and whether the fear is that of
monsters under the bed when you're five years old or is that of the
killers and rapists outside when you're 35 years old, we fear what
crawls around in the dark.
But
what's also frightening is the fear not of your defenselessness when
you're sleeping, but of you could do when sleeping. The sleepwalker
is an active participant in our world, but their motives are firmly
embedded in the hazy logic of the dreaming world. Abiding by the
logic of some hidden place within consciousness, the somnambulist
lives on both sides of that line, and is rendered blameless because--
like amnesiacs or the insane-- he or she has become separated from
common human reality.
So
whatever parasitic force within me took over that night, I hope, that
by putting it out in the open instead of burying it in shame and
denial, I can confront it as such. In calling it what it is, the
albatross can fall off and into the sea.
