Somniphobia: the fear of falling asleep.
Sleeplessness runs in my family. It is mostly the men who struggle with it on my mother’s side. I believe it was a gene-therapist that told me it has something to do with the protein expression on a set of chromosomes I inherited from my mother. My family told stories about how my great-great-great Uncle Augustus was a soldier in Germany. The sleeplessness started on the battlefields and carried over on his voyage to America. It was a memory of wartime that he passed down to his heirs. A reminder of the cost of suffering. I want to believe that to be true. I want a nice neat answer for the Hell I am trapped in. I am so afraid the next time I fall asleep I will not wake up. I know she is waiting there for me. She is so patient. She is a cat looking at a wounded bird. She knows no kindness as she toys with me. Elma is a hunter. She stalks us, waiting to show us what true cruelty looks like.
I’ve fought going to sleep since I was a child. It started with the woman sitting on the foot of my bed. It was a black form that loomed in the darkness of my room. The woman was heavy as she sat in the darkness. Its shape arched as it intently watched my face. The shape had uneven edges, that swam in the air. Like a blanket with the edges unwoven. She was in my room but unattached to it. It did not live in my room but was visiting for the moment. She carried with her this heavy sadness and anger that suffocated me awake. When I would start to come to, she would disappear quietly. Her agile cat-like movements of diving back into the shadows horrified me. The dark edges of the room were like a swimming pool she could dissolve back into without a trace. Like a crocodile sinking back down into brackish water. No ripples or bubbles, just unbroken dark water.
As I grew into a teenager, it felt ridiculous that I was still having phantom shadows keeping me up at night. The woman was just that, a shadow. My half-awake mind also meant I was half-asleep. I was coming out of a dream and my brain was still processing it as I came to. I was resolved to touch and talk to it. To prove it was just in my head. One night, I woke up and my mouth felt like all my teeth were replaced by marbles. My tongue uselessly bounced off of them as I grunted at the woman on my bed. The gurgling noise seemed to hold her attention for a moment. As I struggled to sit up, my body too deaden by sleep, I tried to talk again. My words slurred as I tried to find where her eyes might be. The darkness of her form inhaled all the light in the room.
I could see its fringes twitch and sprout. Long spider arms dragged the woman closer to my face. I shut my eyes and braced myself. “What is your name?” I finally was able to whimper. Its body was frigid. Like someone had set down an ice sculpture beside me. The air around me felt damp and cold. Like a rainstorm in autumn. I squeezed my eyes tighter as I felt her wrap around my arm. It burned my skin as she touched it. Like dry ice sticking to my skin.
I screamed as I struggled against her. I remember feeling so weak. I tried to swing my arms wildly and grab onto my bed. The woman was so strong as she twisted my arm. I was pinned in place as I thrashed and struggled in my sheets. I thought I was going to spend eternity trapped in that moment. Unable to move freely and burning with a cold intensity only the depths of outer space knew. My dad turned on the bedroom light and screamed himself. He had never seen anyone have a seizure before. I guess it is terrifying from whichever side you are on.
My parents argued in the kitchen over what should be done. I do not remember what they were saying, they both sounded out of tune as I looked over my arm. The woman had left something behind. The lines were drawn too long for the letters, or the ink had gotten wet as it ran down the curve of my forearm. It was like an Indian rope burn or a skewed branding. The burn throbbed as I traced the lines to make sense of their shape, “Elma”. My mom thought it was just a rash from getting twisted around my sheets. I had managed in my thrashing to bound my arm so tightly in my blanket that it had to be cut off. The woman, Elma, had made her point. I stopped talking about her and tried to forget that experience. Just a particularly rough night in a long series of sleepless nights.
I thought distance from my childhood home would help with my sleeping. So, when I was getting ready for college, I only applied to ones that were several states away. I needed some space away from my family. The family that seemed content on just letting me suffer sleeplessness because it was hereditary. It was something I was born to suffer through to them. I was so angry at their response. Their dismissive eye rolls when I tried to say how little sleep I was getting. When I moved out, I packed myself up and left without looking back. I could not say goodbye. To them my reaction to my waking nightmares and exhaustion was dramatic. Others had suffered far longer. I had no right to complain about a few inconveniences when I was ‘fine otherwise’.
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