Anybody who knows me knows that I'm generally an intense, high-energy person. This persona seems to translate into my sleep patterns, too. It is not unusual for me to awake from vivid, active dreams at a least a couple nights per week where it's very difficult at first to distinguish between dream and reality. This sensation can be disorienting as the logical brain fights to sort fact from fiction. Add in moving about the room/apartment and potentially waking up in some place other than one's bed, and, well, it's crazy. Now add the last factor: having a spouse who is affected by your sleep behaviors. It can lead to less than ideal situations. Suffice to say, there are right ways and wrong ways to wake someone from a vivid, active dream.
I remember waking up when I was a kid and being in weird places in my bedroom. Stuck in a corner, pushing a door that opened toward me, backwards or sideways in bed, in my closet, going through drawers, etc. I always apparently talked a lot in my sleep as a child. Being a high-strung type, it was always chalked up to stress and hormones, and hoped that I'd outgrow it. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened. To this day, I still talk in my sleep.
In college, I had one particular experience while doing an internship at Argonne Labs that stuck out. My roommate was a biology major with some studies in psychology. He claimed he would actually have conversations with me in my sleep, though he said I rarely said anything coherent or sensible. My wife related similar stories when we first got married, that I would talk in my sleep and she would think I was actually awake when, in fact, I was sleep talking. She would come home late from tennis, for example, and I'd ask how she was, how she played, and so on, and then would have no recollection of the conversation in the morning. Stuff like that.
Anyway... enough background, let's get the reason for the post. I woke up very angry this morning. Angry at my wife. Why? Well, it was residual anger, really, and something that just needed some conscious time to defray that negative energy. The cause? Being awoken in the midst of an active, vivid dream in a bad way.
In the 15 minutes after I went to bed last night I must have slipped into REM sleep very quickly. Either that, or I was having NREM dreams that were quite vivid. At any rate, I started waking up from the dream because it was bordering on a nightmare and the rational brain started becoming aware of the situation and slowly intervening. Unfortunately, I was up and active and - worse - talking (possibly yelling?) about the subject of the dream (in this case, all I remember is something about frogs on my wife's nightstand).
Just as my brain started to bring me out of this, my wife got annoyed and yelled at me. The jarring effect triggered an angry response (unsure why - maybe embarrassment?). Not only was I angry, I was very angry, to the point of having to get up to calm my agitation. At first I was completely disoriented. I had no idea where I was or what was going on. Why was I being yelled at? The rational brain quickly caught up, but not before the emotional response (perhaps combined with adrenaline?) had been triggered, and strongly at that.
In order to calm down, I went to my home office and caught up on email for a little bit. Drank some water. Got the adrenaline surge (and the resultant shaking fury) to subside, and then stalked back to bed. My wife was in the bathroom, and for whatever reason, still apparently enraged by how I was awoken, I yanked the sheet and blanket off the bed and threw it on the floor. As I climbed into bed, I kicked her pillows off the bed.
Now the weird, potentially scary part: I don't know why I did that last bit. I was mad at her for waking me suddenly, but why throw a temper-tantrum? Why lash out and throw the covers and pillows onto the floor?
She climbed into bed with her pillows and pulled the covers up over herself and returned to sleep. I didn't. Cold, but unwilling to physically admit the mistake and ridiculousness of the outburst, I laid shivering until much later in the morning. I finally broke down around 4-4:30 or so and grabbed some blanket for myself. But, what a stupid, childish, boneheaded situation!
But, it gets worse... this morning, I'm still fuming (hence the need to blog about it). To the degree that I skipped breakfast, quickly showered and dressed, and walked out of the house, avoiding all eye contact with my spouse, not saying a word, just going. She wasn't far behind me, and called me on my cell about 5 minutes after pulling away. The basic message was "wtf?!?" and "what did [she] do?" My only response was "Do you remember yelling at me in the middle of the night?" The answer was "yes, you were yelling something about frogs..." To which I said "well, it was jarring, I had no idea what was going on, I was disoriented, you were yelling at me, I just... I don't know..." and then hung up. Gosh, I'm so mature! Sheesh...
So, here I am, wound up at work, needing to settle down, write a status report, and then brace myself for a string of meetings all day (oh, joy). I have a feeling my wife is having a very bad day as a result of my poor behavior. This is the normal pattern, anyway. She does something that makes me irate, I retaliate by acting like an angry 3-yr-old, and then she has a terrible day. Completely unfair. Although, in this specific case, she knows how she's supposed to respond when I'm having these nightmares, and she didn't do it last night. Of course, this wasn't the first night this week I'd had active dreams, so she's probably completely frazzled. In fact, it's quite possible I'm having a series of bad nights, as I seem to recall waking up most nights in the last week to ten days. Nonetheless, my acting like a complete ass was not justified. Time to suck it up and apologize to her. Need to go home and make her a nice dinner or something. My money is on her being completely exhausted tonight, too. Man, what I complete jerk I've been.
Sorry honey - I love you!
