Night Terrors

Thanks to the subject of this post I am wide awake at 4:30AM. It's such a bizarre problem that I felt compelled to finally write about it, even though it's likely to make me seem like an insane person.

So what's a night terror? Like a bad nightmare, right?

Not even a little. Imagine waking up from sleep, completely aware of your surroundings and able to interact with your environment but having the sudden overwhelming sense of impending doom. Something terrible is about to happen. That "something" is a total variable; you're 95% lucid and have no idea which 5% is not real.

That nebulous 5% can manifest itself in any way imaginable. In a split second, the brain makes up sometimes incredibly elaborate backstories for what is about to "happen". If I could somehow channel the creativity of the night terror center of my brain, I'd probably be a highly successful author or clown or something.

Here are some of the ways my night terrors manifest themselves:

• (Most common) Giant spider in the corner. Can't actually see it, but I know it's there, lurking and ready to pounce if I move at all.
• (Second most common) Any red LED light in the room = camera. Someone's gone and installed cameras in my room, or outside the window and they're watching me. Creeps.
  
• (Third most common) I've somehow accidentally woken up in somebody else's room. Some stranger's room. Crap, I'd better get out before they realize I'm sleeping in here! So I get up and leave.
• Oh shit, the ceiling's about to collapse! Better throw myself on the ground so I don't get squashed!
• Uh oh, that bottle on my dresser is spraying out toxic fumes. I need to let everyone in the house know they need to leave so they don't breathe in the fumes!
• (Hearing someone talking in the other room) O.M.G. I've heard this conversation before... I'm trapped in some kind of repeating time loop... HELP!
• That's not a bar on the window, it's a rope... there's a SWAT team climbing outside the window, poised and ready to break in at any second!
• Someone's built a deadly Rube Goldberg machine that's triggered by any motion I make. If I move at all, it will set off a chain of events that will lead to my demise!
• Oh fuck, that sound outside is some kind of nuclear weapon about to land on the house! Not much I can do about that one...
  
• And myriad others, often too abstract to really understand once I've come-to.
  

The way that night terrors substantiate themselves (at least for me) seems to be completely unrelated to anything- not something that happened that day or what I was just dreaming about. My previously peacefully-sleeping brain just suddenly spazzes and says "JESUS CHRIST LIZ, WAKE UP AND SAVE YOURSELF FROM THIS THING". And I do. And after a few minutes, my normal logical self takes over and I feel really really stupid for not knowing that I was having a night terror. Especially if I manage to lock myself out of the room in the process.

But at the time it always seems so real, and even if I can actively tell myself I'm having a night terror, it's SO vivid that I end up convincing myself that this time it's real. I knew it. There is definitely a giant spider in the corner this time.

Other people's night terrors often involve "shadow people" or "demons" or sleep paralysis and frankly I am effing thrilled as hell that mine do not. That is way too intense. I'll gladly stick with my toxic-fume spewing bottle of hairspray, thank you.

Update: 10/04/10

Unfortunately, depending on what your brain has made up, there is the opportunity to seriously injure yourself or others near you. The worst I've done is bruise myself up by throwing myself on the floor to avoid the collapsing ceiling; however, recently, I experienced a night terror while having a migraine. My brain convinced me that this migraine was being caused by a foreign object in my head and I needed to get it out of there ASAP. Fortuitously, I just had moved my scissors away from my bed and to the other side of the room earlier that night. There's no telling how that might have ended had the scissors been easily accessible before this night terror faded.