Today, I started The Sleepwalker by Chris Bojalian. It is on the list of potential books to discuss at the book club in 2018. Since I like to read a good selection of the books on the full list of 26 titles and I finished the complication on Tuesday afternoon, I decided to get to it. So far the book is interesting, Lianna Alhberg is recounting the disappearance of her mother Annalee one night. The presumption is that Annalee drowned during a sleepwalking episode. Bojalian is reading a bit like Ruth Ware, author of Woman in Cabin 10 & In a Dark, Dark Wood, who reads a bit like Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl fame. At any rate, I am expecting the unexpected. By the way, Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects is pretty amazing in Flynn's somewhat creepy and very definitely twisted storytelling. A much better book than Gone Girl in my opinion.
Back from the digression, it is pretty rare, but I have been known to sleepwalk. As I am reading The Sleepwalker, I keep distracting myself by running through my own experiences. Primarily, I am writing this so that I can get me out of my head and I can focus on the story written by Chris Bohjalian. I want to know what happens.
Sleep and I have never been comfortable friends so it probably isn't a surprise that a handful of times I've gone somnabulatory. The first time that I or my family for that matter remembers was the summer I turned thirteen. We were set to depart for a rare family vacation the next day. I had a pink Mary Kay makeup case that I had proudly filled with a new makeup collection that I had purchased with earnings from my job as one of the Candyshop Girls at the State Theater.
Here is what I remember from the episode. Both of my brothers were in my younger brother's room. I knew, just knew that they had taken my pink game. So I went to them demanding that they return my pink game. I remember seeing their faces and denying that they had my game. Finally after a few minutes, my brothers concluded that I was asleep, at which point I stomped off to my room. The next morning, my brothers confirmed that I had accosted them in the middle of the night about my pink game. We laughed it off and to my knowledge that was the one and only time until I was 17 years old.
The summer before I went off to college, I kept finding random kitchen appliances in my room--a can opener, a potato peeler, etc. I would return them to the kitchen wondering how and why in the world they they were in my room. On about the 3rd time I was returning the can opener to the kitchen, I remarked to my younger brother and mother, I didn't know how, the items kept ending up in my room. At that point, my brother said that the previous night, he was in the kitchen when I came down, riffled through the cabinets and then proceeded back upstairs with the prize in my hands. Hmm, to this day, I have no memory or recollection as to why not once but on 5 separate occasions that summer I needed these things in my room.
And then there was the time in Japan about 6 months out as I was preparing to return to the US for the final time. I had a pretty cool dream where I was the captain of spaceship and I was navigating the universe by a brightly lit control panel. The next day, when I wanted to listen to a new CD, I found that all the presets on my Japanese stereo system was out of whack. As I was trying to figure out how to get everything back, I realized that the stereo look a hell of a lot like the spaceship's control panel in my dream the night before.
Clearly these episodes can be traced back to some sort of emotional turmoil due to changes--an anticipated vacation, leaving home and upending my life. Probably, if I delve into it, I could find a similar pattern for the re-occurring dream I have had since moving to California.
About once a year or so, I will dream that there is a fire. I hop out of bed and see smoke. In a panic, I yell FIRE and wake up. Once awake, I realize it was just a dream and then with sense of relief and a little chuckle go back to bed. I don't know if these episodes would be counted as sleepwalking or not, although clearly I am still in a dream state when I jump out of bed since I see the smoke. Probably, it is my subconscious working through living in a fire prone area and the related fears. I'm not too concerned since I always wake up right away and I have no other evidence that there is anything more going on while I am asleep. I'm pretty sure that the cats would let me know as they are always right there waiting for their ears to be scratched when I wake up briefly in the middle of the night.
That that this is all out of my mind, back to the book.