Sleep Walking

Now I’ve always had a reputation, since I was a child, for wanting to go out, but I seem to have taken that reputation to a whole new level this weekend when I took a walk outside in my sleep in the middle of the night. Not the first time I have wandered around in my sleep (my last episode was about 18 years ago) but it was the first time I have walked out of the house.

I have no recollection of “getting up” but I do have hazy memories of parts of that night. Since then, I have been trying to piece together the events of my sleep walking episode, which now seems kind of funny but was very, very terrifying then. I must have gotten up and wandered into the living room, but I don’t remember doing that. However, I remember bumping into a coffee table in the living room and knocking over a few candles, and then trying unsuccessfully to put them back in their place. I then blank out completely again until I’m in the corridor outside my flat. It seems I unlocked the door and walked out. I am not sure where I went initially, but the soles of my feet were relatively clean when I finally “woke up” (seeing as I was wandering around barefoot and in my pyjamas) so I most probably didn’t make it outside the building.

A hazy image of the guy who washes the cars downstairs at night is imprinted in my mind, but I am so mortified by the notion that he could have seen me wandering around in my pyjamas acting all weird, that I’m not going to ask him whether I was in fact downstairs or not. I am trying to persuade myself that I could have seen him through the corridor window, after all.

Now, everyone that knows me, knows I have a deep-seated phobia of cockroaches. I remember looking around me, standing in the corridor, to see if there were any cockroaches. My boyfriend pointed out that since my subconscious seems to have kicked in, even in my sleep, to look out for those horrible, horrible monsters, it must also have prevented me from wandering around barefoot outside, seeing as I hate stepping on dirty things! :)))

I think I finally woke up at the sound of the elevator reaching our floor (had I been on it or was someone else coming up at 5 am?). At the elevator “ding”, I found myself at the end of the corridor, aware that I was outside and sure that I shouldn’t be there. I made my way back to the flat, opened the door and walked in. There was my sister, looking terrified. She thought I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and had finally gotten worried when I never came back to bed. It never occurred to her that I had in fact opened the door and walked out.

I scared the hell out of both of us. We are now taking some preventative measures at home. She locks the door and hides her key, while I put my key (which I need to open the door to leave to work in the morning) under her bed. If I try to reach for it, determined to break out of the house, she’ll wake up since I probably won’t be very light-footed and quiet. In the morning, when I’m “really” awake, I can get my key without disturbing her sleep (poor thing now wakes up every time I turn over, scared that I’m going to take off again).

Needless to say, I’ve gotten my fair share of wisecracks, like the suggestion to sleep with those squeaky kids shoes on so that I can alert everyone to my movements, or to put my bike out in the corridor, so I can get some exercise while I’m at it. Seriously though, I hope that was a one-off incident. I can’t imagine what would have happened had I wandered further off.