Thursday, November 18, 2010

Why I’m up this morning…

I woke up this morning with an overwhelming certainty in my head. Now, I’ve done this before and every time I’ve been wrong. Rather than get out of bed and follow that feeling of certainty, I felt it would be prudent to weigh the certainty with a bit of caution.

I couldn’t have dreamt this all up out of whole cloth, I thought. Certainly, some of what I was so certain about had to be true.

Rather than beat around the bush of certainty, I guess I should just tell you what I was so certain about. I woke up in my house, with my stuff moved into the spare room upstairs – as it has been for months now – and realized that with my brother, Keith, staying with us that was pretty darned rude. After all, where would he sleep?

In my half-asleep brain, I rationalized that I probably hadn’t moved everything into the spare room overnight. Still, I reasoned, it was rude to make him sleep on the sofa downstairs, the only other place he could sleep. So, I got up. I got dressed. I went downstairs to apologize for…

This is when I realized that not only was Keith not on the sofa, Keith had never stayed with us. Not only had I dreamt it all up out of whole cloth, I had dreamt up the rationalization and had sleepwalked (yet again) because of it.

There’s nothing more disturbing that knowing that you can function at your rational best and still be completely irrational. After all, what is sleepwalking if not irrational?

I just thought I’d share this story for anyone out there who thinks sleepwalking is somehow goofy or made up. No, it’s real and it’s seriously disturbing. It’s enough to keep you up at night.

No comments: