disorder

My insomnia has been real bad lately. Wait, I don't like the term insomnia. That sounds like an infection. I ain't been sleeping so good lately. I can be as tired as a day laborer but as soon as that light goes off every thought a person is capable of having charges through my head. I do come up with a lot of good blog ideas, twitters, and chapter titles for my novel but I forget them by morning.

Morning! Morning comes too early. I wake up long before the alarm is set and can't get back to sleep. My heart is pounding and my thoughts are upturned. Not cool Zeus!

More interesting than not sleeping though is Hypnogagia. Look it up! Basically it's a disorder where your brain and your body don't wake up at the same time. Maybe your brain wakes up but your body is still in sleep paralysis. So you lay there awake, but can't move. Also, you hallucinate monsters. Fun!

This has happened to me four times, most recently last night.

The first time I was a kid. Just four or five. I woke up and perceived that Star Wars aliens were in my room staring at me. Like three Nien Numbs or something.

No seriously, monsters. See, your brain is awake, but not completely, and for whatever reason you conjure up hallucinations of usually unpleasant things. I'd wager most alien abduction cases can be explained by this.

Anyway, shortly after the Nien Numb incident I was told that there had been an earthquake. That's an important fact.

The second time I was older, late teens. This time I woke up to a vampire at the foot of my bed. a large one. Guess what? There was also an earthquake that night. So apparently an earthquake shakes my bed with just enough force to wake me up halfway.

I should point out, these hallucinations, you don't actually "see" them, you just kind of know that they're there. Like how right now you know that maybe there's a wall behind you or whatever even though you can't actually see it.

The third time was the scariest and longest incident. I had fallen asleep with the tv on and woke up to find myself watching the Simpsons, even though I didn't want to be. I couldn't move and it lasted long enought that I could actually think "I can't move. I can't close my eyes. I shouldn't be looking at the Simpsons right now but I can't close my eyes." I perceived, just off the side of my bed, a large goblin creature. It was horrible and malicious. This lasted an estimated 45 minutes (probably 10 seconds in actuality) before I noticed that my bed was shaking. Aha! I put it all together and realized that earthquakes caused these bizarre dream things.

Except there actually wasn't an earthquake that night. Huh.

Last night I woke up and there was an (imaginary) intruder in my room. I responded like I would if it was a real intruder. Cooly and calmly. My exact words, out loud (I think) were "Huh? Huh? Huh? What? What do you want? What is it? Oh my god. Ohhh my god." Finally I was able to move and flipped on a light. No intruder. Felt my bed rattle, but no earthquake.

Well, that's today's story.