Rest

When I was no older than six, I overheard my mother talking about the movie The Exorcist. I was raised in a Roman Catholic household, where the idea of demonic possession was more than fodder for a scary move. It was a real possibility, and you had no control over whether or not it happened to you.

The thought of your body being inhabited by a demon is terrifying at any age. At six, unable to even comprehend Satan or God (or for that matter, mental illness), the thought was enough to make me sleepless for well over a year.

I could fall asleep easily enough, thanks to a Strawberry Shortcake bedside lamp complete with nightlight. I'd curl up with my Rainbow Bright doll and fall fast asleep.

But every night I woke up in the early hours of the morning, long after my parents had fallen asleep convinced that the devil was in my room and was trying to find a way inside of me. I'd drag my pillow, blankets, and Rainbow Bright into the hallway and fall asleep between the bedrooms, in the comforting glow of the bathroom light. And every morning my mother would get up to make lunches and have a cup of coffee before waking us only to have to step over me in the hallway, sound asleep.

I never told my parents what scared me so badly.

***

Sleep disorders are part and parcel of my family. Everyone has, at some point, had issues sleeping. I don't think my father has slept more than five hours a night in my lifetime, and I'm convinced he has sleep apnea. If nothing else, he snores fit to beat the band. Mom talks in her sleep, as did my older brother when he was a child. I sleepwalk and have dreams I can't differentiate from reality upon waking (this happens at least once a week). My younger brother also had issues sleepwalking though much of his childhood. More frightening, he had night terrors (different from simple nightmares) from which he could not be woken. My mother would wake in the middle of the night to her youngest child shrieking and crying and couldn't do anything to help him. When she asked our pediatrician about it, he responded with typical Midwestern blandness.

"He'll grow out of them."

I've never asked if he has.

***

I pull off my eye mask and struggle to sit upright. The red clock on the microwave reads 1:43. For the past four nights I've woken at 1:43 to get up and wander around the apartment for an hour or two. I read, a little, but mainly I just pace until I'm tired enough to return to the recliner to which I'm banished while I wait for my broken ribs to heal.

The insomnia, I think, is preferable to the nightmares and relentless sleepwalking of the week before.

I think.

***

When describing my sleepwalking to friends, I keep the tone light. I tell them the funny sleepwalking episodes--the time I thought I was the grand empress of Prussia and was being attacked by an army of trebuchets. Or the time I thought my roommates had smeared canned tuna all over my room and spent forty minutes hunting high and low for a non-existent can of tuna. They make light of the sleepwalking, mainly because none of them have ever seen me do it.

I do not tell them that--even a few years ago--I would let myself out of the house or my dorm room and wake up outside, totally unaware of how long I had been there or what had persuaded me to rise in the middle of the night. I rarely remember the dreams that drive me
from my bed, and when I do, I wish I hadn't.

The nightmares are almost always they same. A post-apocolyptic vision of the world that would put Cormac McCarthy to shame. I almost always wake up with a shriek dying on my lips, drenched in sweat, with my heart racing. I've woken from these dreams tangled in bedclothes, huddled in a corner of the bedroom with my arms above my face, locked in the bathroom with
 my back pressed against the door.

When I do finally wake up, it takes awhile for my heart to slow down. I turn on all the lights in the house, take the blankets from the bed, wrap myself up, and sit on the couch for long minutes.

I'm not so far from fears of demonic possession afterall.

***

When my bed is an option (as I hope it will be again very soon), my routine rarely changes. I am tucked in among the covers, computer, alarm clock, and any other light-emitting object banished to another room by 10:15. The sheets always smell like lavender, I always read until 10:30 or 10:45, and I always keep a glass of water next to the bed. I wear practical pajamas of the same style every night. After reading, I pull my eye mask over my eyes and curl around my body pillow hoping that, tonight at least, I'll be able to rest.