sleeping lessons

Tonight I'm headed out to some clinic which looks eerily like it's in the middle of nowhere, on the map. There, I will get wired up to machines to find out what the fuck is wrong with me while I sleep.

I've had lifelong sleep problems, ranging from insomnia to parasomnia (sleepwalking/sleep talking/other sleep actions). Most of it is terrifying - the kind of thing that were I to develop a means of torture, I'd channel that. It is a primordial kind of terror - pure adrenaline, heart pounding and a metallic taste in my mouth, once I emerge (shakily) back into waking world. Sometimes, I can barely stand, grasping a doorframe, trying to convince myself that there is no threat.

Most people can't remember their night terrors, I'm told. I do. Mine are tortured incursions into my space - tentacled creatures that emerge through the ceiling lamp. Harmful entities, reminding me that I am dead. Mirror-world monsters, ready to eat me. Vengeful upstairs neighbors, spying through my closet. Imminent building collapse - by fire, flood, earthquake or unknown force.

My dreamworld is, in a word, fucked. And I don't know if the sleep study will be able to dissect that from the little skitters on tape that my brain will produce. I can't even count on it happening. Monsters don't write themselves into your calendar.

I'm actually for the first time ever concerned that the cerebral demons won't show their faces, that an overnight in a strange sterile place will be for nothing, and that my neurologist will give me that look that says: "You are unsolvable. Stop trying. You span worlds. Learn to live with it."

Frontiers in sleep.