Yesterday morning I was reminded of a strange habit that relates to my sleeping. Well, maybe habit isn’t the best word. Nuance? Foible? Peccadillo? Idiosyncrasy? I think any of those might fit. Anyway, basically what happens is that in the first few minutes or so after waking, my mind will occasionally be furiously paranoid.
An example: The other morning I woke up to the sound of metal hitting wood or plastic, and there was a high-pitched tone that resulted from the metal, sort of like the vibrations from a tuning fork. I very rationally thought, “Oh, there goes my ring off the dresser.” Then I went insane. My next thought was that one of the cats was going to ingest the ring (probably because of this), so I was scrambling around on my hands and knees looking for it on the carpet. After not finding it I checked the dresser and found it exactly where it was supposed to be, so my next though was EVEN CRAZIER. Mrs. ACW sometimes leaves her rings all over the damn house all the time. On the coffee table, on top of the toaster, on the window by the kitchen sink, on her dresser, on her nightstand, on my dresser, on the computer desk, on her scrap-booking table, on the bathroom sink, et cetera ad nauseum. So upon finding my ring where it was supposed to be, I crawled back into bed and had angry paranoid thoughts until I fell back asleep.
“God damn it, the cats are going to eat her ring. Then we’ll have to pay out the ass to get the ring back. Then the ring will be ugly and Mrs. ACW will be like, ‘I need a new ring,’ but I’ve got news for her: there won’t be any more new rings after this. She just leaves them all over the place. She doesn’t care if they fall in the trash or the toilet or anything. She always does this with everything. She just leaves things laying around because she’s so materialistic. She thinks we can just buy anything we ever need.” And so on.
For those of you who know Mrs. ACW, you know she’s not really materialistic at all, so I have know idea where this craziness comes from, but it tends to go away after a few minutes, or once I fall back asleep. I’ll wake up later and think, “What was I thinking? What a ridiculous train of thought.”
Another time I didn’t fall back asleep, but actually came out of my paranoid delusions as I was going about my morning routine. As usual the cats were being little bitches and whining for food, so I got up to feed them and found their food container empty. No big deal, I just have to refill it with a fresh bag. But that’s not what my brain was thinking. “I can’t believe this, Mrs. ACW left emptied the cat food container and didn’t refill it. She knew I was going to wake up first and find this. She is intentionally sabotaging my morning. I can’t believe that someone would do something like this. How hard is it to put a new bag of food in the container? In fact, why isn’t she doing this right now? I should be sleeping, I can’t believe this.” And on and on as I gave the cats their food and water. But then as I was walking down the hall to brush my teeth and get in the shower I began to think, “What the hell was that all about? Why would Mrs. ACW intentionally do something like that? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought. I can’t believe I thought she was trying to sabotage my morning. Sabotage?! What the hell?”
And before all you people with Psych degrees put on your Dr. Freud hats and start chomping on your phallic cigars, know that Mrs. ACW has only been the target of my delusional mind those two times. The other times that it has happened it’s been focused on any number of people, animals, and inanimate objects. And this doesn’t happen every time I wake up, just once every few weeks or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m crazy, and I was really pissed off at a lamp one time. Whatever. Shut up. Eat a dick.
I don’t know why it happens, but I think I have some idea. I know when some people wake up they take a while to get going, and it takes them a bit for their brain to warm up. Like starting a car I guess. For me, on the other hand, it’s like instead of my “car” being turned off overnight, it is instead driven onto a treadmill, where it slowly builds speed throughout the night, then at the point of waking the treadmill is shut off and my “car” rockets forward. Most of the time I keep going, like Bo and Luke evading Boss Hog, but occasionally the car bottoms out, hubcaps go flying, an axle snaps, and all the passengers are killed. On those mornings, I have the paranoia.
Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this?
I leave my keys in any number of places such as the cripser drawer in the refrigerator, on top of the dryer in the basement, in the fruit bowl, in my shoes, on the back of the toilet, etc. There is no pattern to it and it drives LF crazy because I can never find my keys. Perhaps Mrs. ACW and I suffer from our shared astrological sign. We all know how reliable astrology is, right? Aquarians: “The proverbial absent-minded professors who are often out of touch with their day-to-day affairs.”
Clearly, you’ve gone “Vag-crazy”
I have something like that; before I am fully awake, similar stupid-ass conclusions are leaped to. I don’t think I get paranoid, although I do get really defensive. For example, denying that I was snoring like a motherfucker even though it is 100% certain that I was, and had been for hours.
Alternatively, it sounds like trouble with your cold-start valve…
Acctually yeah, my problems are usually in the middle of the night when I wake up suddenly and think something is going terribly wrong.
I’ve woken up thinking that the computer was making a horrible noise, pulling the power plug and waking up the next morning to find that I had almost ripped the power cable in half.
I’ve run in to check on my children because I think they’re drowning in their beds… That one’s a bit strange, it usually happens when it’s raining or something.
A number of times I’ve thrown off the sheet to go tend to some emergency only to take a few steps and find that it’s only in my head.
Maybe we’re just a weird family.
Uh, you guys are strange. When I’m asleep, I sleep. And snore. Loudly.
I’m the exact reciprocal of you. I’m paranoid all the time and only have moments of clarity every once in a while when I wake up. So, I guess I can relate.
Uh huh. Its even more fun now because I’m an EMT, which means two nights a week I’m on duty from 6pm-6am. My pager goes off, I get a massive adrenaline dump that almost immediately makes me sick to my stomach, and I scramble in the dark for my shoes. Even though I lay shoes, keys, coat, and glasses out for myself for just this reason, if I don’t put my hand on them immediately I rage in my head about how my husband moved everything and what a selfish pricktard he is. The scary part is I’m usually not 100% awake and sensible until about five minutes after we roll into the ER with the patient.
Well…you just read about how crazy I am in the middle of the night. So I think you have your answer.
I get hypnogogia, which happens when my dreams mesh into my wakened state. Usually, I see things like spiders and giant flying cockroaches. Once, I saw a huge mouse scamper across the ceiling. I woke up and turned on the light, and it took me a while to realize that even if there had been a mouse, it wouldn’t be possible for it to run across the ceiling. I also see hands coming at me - that’s really creepy. Fortunately, I’m used to it and I shake it off fairly quickly.
Using my Psych degrees and putting on my Dr. Freud hat, I’d say it’s early onset of paranoid schizophrenia.
But really, I get the same paranoid rage, but usually at the opposite end of the day - when I need to get to bed. This often happens after a long shift at work, when I have to deal with a dozen or so idiots on public transport, all hell bent on not getting out of my way, taking my favourite seat, and playing music too loudly. I nearly threw someone’s phone out of the train window last week.
i have hit myself in the face with my own arm and then given my boyfriend the stinkeye because he was looking at me from across the room or i will pinch my ear with the flat iron and blame it on the dog. it’s not just when i wake up, though. it’s pretty much all the time.
OMG…U have exactly what i have lol. So a couple mornings ago i wake up next to my girlfriend hungover and completly dehydradeted. All I can think about is water and how much better it will make me feel. I am uncomfortable at my gf’s house since her parents live there and would feel weird strolling downstairs in my boxers to get a glass of ice water. So when my girlfriend wakes up i ask her politly to go get me glass of water. Her SELFISH reaction, “no, u get it”…so my paronoid wake-up mode kicks in and instantly i start thinking “what a fucking bitch, i am soooo thirsty, cant u see that?!?!” Literally i am sitting there getting more and more thirsty as my head is about to explode. So to make a long story slightly shorter, i eventually left in a fit of anger, only to appologize on the drive home.