Somnambulism

I experience Somnambulism. (I really don't want to say I suffer from it, because I don't suffer from it. My spouse does.) In other words I am a sleepwalker. I have been known to talk in my sleep and to walk in my sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, is much more common in children than adults, but they also point out that the "persistence of sleepwalking in adulthood is common, and is usually not associated with any significant underlying psychiatric or psychological problems." Phew! That's a relief.

As I can attest, sleepwalking often occurs when the person is sleep deprived. During my first year as a grad student, I had several incidents of sleepwalking. One night I ran out into the front room and looked out our front window, but when it didn't match the dream I was having, I woke up, feeling a bit confused. When I was still single and in the middle of finals week, one night I began talking loudly in my sleep.

My sister, who was my roommate at the time, knew that I usually quiet down if I'm told to, so she said "Timidtripper, be quiet." Instead of going back to sleep, I continued to talk, but I lowered my voice to a whisper. "No," she said to me, "Shut up!" And I did.

My husband has woken up to find me standing on the bed, staring at the ceiling or rifling through the book shelf near our bed. He has also learned to tell me to go back to sleep, but this doesn't always work. One night I woke him up twice, as I tried to scoot across our bed, presumably to go somewhere else. I'm not sure why I didn't just swing my legs over my side of the bed and just walk, but part of the episode included scooting from the head of the bed to the foot. He told me to go back to sleep and I did. The second time, I guess I knew he was going to try and stop me, because I was moving much faster, as if I needed to get out of there before he could catch me. Who knows where I was going because he did catch me and I settled down. And then there was the time that I jumped up and ran out of the room, and he couldn't remember my name in order to call me back. Yup, we'd only been married for five years at that point.

I also find his attempts to quiet me really obnoxious when I'm not actually sleepwalking. The night before we moved out of our California apartment, I had packed up our clothes in suitcases and left them on the floor in our bedroom. Around one in the morning, I got up to use the bathroom, but on my way, I tripped on the leg of one of the suitcases. I whacked my ankle pretty hard, causing me yell out as I grabbed the injured foot and leaned forward towards the wall for support. But as my hand hit the wall, it also connected with the light switch turning the hall light on. Almost immediately I flipped it off, but all the commotion woke up Dan who started yelling "Timidtripper! Timidtripper!" Obviously he was worried that I was sleepwalking again.

So I said, "I'm just going to the bathroom. Chill out." But I can't really blame him for thinking I was sleepwalking. After all, I'm the one who, soon after we were married, asked him one night, when he came to bed a few hours after I did, "Is anyone else coming?" Needless to say, he never knows what to expect from me once I've gone to sleep.