by Cathy
'If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?'
Therefore, I got to thinking that similarly, if we snore/whisper/talk/scream/fart/teeth-grind/walk/jerk in our sleep, do we realize it?
We've all no doubt been told by those who sleep in the same room with us that we _______ in our sleep. And of course, we vehemently deny these antics occur because, duh, we're asleep...what the hell do we know? Yet we insist:
"Hell, NO I don't _________ in my sleep!"
Now, I know that I don't scream in my sleep. How can I be so sure, you ask, since I'm asleep? Because when I've tried, I've awoken myself in the half-ass throes of a scream that won't come out and ends up sounding more like a crackled moan, as if I've been crawling through the Sahara for days without water.
For this reason, what happened the other night baffles me to no end. While in a rare, deep, much needed sleep, I hear a faint whisper.
"Cathy....Cathy..."
Now if anyone experiences this while asleep, they would no doubt wake up fully expecting to see the Blair Witch and her Project. This is exactly what happened to me. I awoke with such a freaked-out start, scaring myself even more by expelling the loudest, longest, most horrifying gasp I ever knew I was capable of making, while my arms formed continuous air circles out in front of me.
WHAT THE F@*$K????
I opened my eyes way wider than normal, frantically searching for the source of these eerie whispers. In full-on horror flick mode, I swear to you, I made out the figure of my older daughter Bella hovering over my bed clutching her pillow and Cuddles. But she was just standing there, not speaking a word.
"What. What?!!" I kept saying so as not to scream as my instincts were telling me to.
Bella is known for silently sneaking into our bedroom at night, standing by my side of the bed and whispering at me if she can't sleep/ feels sick/what have you. I thought this was one of those moments. But why would she call me Cathy?
With every blink of my crazed eyes, the outline of her figure was diminishing. My brain was desperately attempting to sort out the dream/reality/mirages of what it was being overloaded with within that one minute. Then I figured it out. I turned to Joe.
"Did you just say my name?"
"Yes," he replied flipping his ass towards me in exasperation.
"WHY?!"
"Because you were screaming in your sleep."
"What?!" I replied, again desperately asking myself if I was still dreaming, because, of course, I know that 'Hell, NO I don't scream in my sleep!'
"You were screaming," he insisted.
"No. I. Wasn't! What was I screaming?"
Then he says: "Honey...Honey..."
WTF? Was HE the one dreaming now?!?!?
"Is that what I was screaming out?" I had to verify before I diagnosed one of us as officially cray-cray.
"Yes." He clicked his teeth with his tongue in that annoying, freaking way, as he was now annoyed because I was asking him why the hell he whispered me awake like the Poltergeist to tell me that I was supposedly screaming in my sleep.
"Are you sure YOU weren't the one who was dreaming this? 'Cuz I never scream in my sleep. I can't even if I wanted to."
"No. Just go back to sleep."
"How the hell am I supposed to sleep NOW? I was sleeping sooooooo good..." I whined as I fluffed my pillow.
As I lay there, listening to my eyes break the silence with every blink, trying desperately to find that sweet slumber that has now cruelly escaped me, I gave some thought to the consequences of waking people out of their sleep. I concluded that we should all just let the snorers snore, the teeth grinders grind, the farters fart, the screamers scream, the walkers walk. After all, if they can't sense it, they're not doing it. It's just so much easier if we remove ourselves from the proverbial forest and pretend we didn't hear that tree fall.
