Hey. Did you know I have sleep issues? That’s a joke. Of course you do. It’s one of the silly little number of subjects I cycle through on this blog.

I’ve had sleep issues since I was a kid. Most of the time, I just didn’t. Sleep. At all.

For several years, I had a recurring nightmare that involved me wearing a squalid Snow White dress and sticking my hand into a scummy fish pond, pulling it out, and watching it melt into a slimy stump. Then I’d wake up. Super fun stuff.

Right around the time puberty hit, so did the sleep paralysis. That was some super scary shit, like the Snow White nightmare times 100. I didn’t even know it had a name until Google was invented and I started trying to figure out what it was that used to happen to me.

Right around that same time, the heartburn started. It was like life was playing a hilariously bad joke on me. Because the only time it happened was when I was laying down. This awful burning pressure in my chest. On the rare occasions that I actually ever got to sleep, I had to sit up and get out of bed as soon as I woke up or the heartburn would start. My mom took me to the GI doctor who told me I was probably getting a stomach ulcer.

Anyway.

Fast forward to now. I still have sleep issues. A few years ago, I started taking this shit that makes me sleep. Finally. After the doctor kept titrating it up to scary high doses, I finally slept. It was wonderful. Truly, the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. Sleep. No dreams. No being frozen in some sort of twilight hell trying to move and scream so someone would wake me up. No heartburn. Just SLEEP.

And I thought all was right with the world.

Until the fam started telling me stories the next morning. Weird stories. About finding me in strange places in the middle of the night. About watching me walk around the house. Eating in the middle of the night. Sitting straight up on the couch with my eyes wide open.