Thursday, January 15, 2015

I don't go to sleep to dream

Okay, I know, I know, I am a terrible blogger and have completely forgotten about updating. Hell, I haven't even signed into read other people's blogs, so I'm totally behind on everyone's lives. (Although I'm happy to see BlueMoon is doing very well with BF! You give me hope for online dating. ;) And I need to write a post because D broke up with Jailbait (!) so I'm a little conflicted.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing today is that I keep having these extremely strange experiences while trying to wake up from sleep, whether it be a nap or overnight. Here's what happens:

  1. Alarm goes off. As per usual, I hit the snooze button.


  2. Alarm goes off again. This time I'm half awake so I reach over and hit the snooze to shut it off.


  3. I then get out of bed (or at least start the process of doing so), but I'm really not. Like my brain is seeing/experiencing waking up, but I'm not physically doing so. It's like I'm dreaming, but I'm not because it's like I'm hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. For example, I'm experiencing getting out of bed, I walk to the bathroom, etc., but all the meanwhile physically I'm still under the covers. And some things will be off, like this morning as I was "in bed," I reached up to my neck and felt a necklace, but I wasn't actually wearing one.


  4. Alarm goes off again. I know what's going on, but I feel like I'm stuck in glue – like my brain is saying, "Get up, move your legs, move your arms!" and the nerve impulses from my brain are telling them to do so, but it's only happening in my "dream." And meanwhile I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm still in my nice warm bed. This morning it was particularly crazy because I knew this weird half awake dreaming thing was going on, and I was thinking, "Just keep shaking your legs and arms and you'll wake up and can get out of bed." But I couldn't.


I finally snapped out of it (after like 5 alarm pushes) and was able to get up. But this happens a LOT to me. It seems to correlate with the ambient temperature in my room – I keep it pretty cold overnight (60) and have it set to 68 for when I wake up at 7... but it's a computerized system that makes the heat turn on around 6 (which is stupid because it doesn't take an hour for my 700 sq foot apartment to warm up ;). So when my alarm goes off, I'm actually quite hot under the covers... which in the past has triggered some crazy ass nightmares and stuff.

What the hell do I do about this? It's starting to become really scary, because I almost feel like if I were ever in a state of semi-consciousness (say, if I were in shock from a car accident) and needed to stay awake, I wouldn't be able to do so because my brain is tricking me into thinking I am when I'm really not. Any neurologists here that can provide some insight? :)






Post title song reference: "Sleep to Dream" - Fiona Apple