sleepwalker 33.sle.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Sometimes when I look back over my early life, I wonder how I missed them: gaps of time as long as nine hours, bumps and bruises, odd dreams and ideas. All of them idly wondered about, but never considered for any length of time. They never struck me as abnormal, since they had been going on from my earliest memories. This was simply just how life was and I learned to adapt to it.

As a young child, I knew there were “monsters” that visited my room at night. I didn’t like them and I developed a fear of the dark. When I would try to tell my parents about the “monsters,” they would ridicule me and tell everyone what an “overactive imagination” I had. Embarrassed, I learned not to talk about the events that were happening to me. Around the age of 10, the fear of the dark grew to the point where I begged for a nightlight. Even with it on, I would lie awake terrified that someone was in my room. Eventually, I very carefully began asking classmates about their own nights, expecting to hear similar stories. I found that most slept peacefully, which surprised me. I don’t think I realized until that point that some people just don’t have these odd occurrences in their lives.

It was during this time that my mother decided I was a sleepwalker, even though no one had ever observed me actually sleepwalking. She would wake in the night and find me in odd places, such as downstairs or in the cellar. Since she was an extremely light sleeper, she could not understand how I could pass in front of her room without waking her. At first, I was always in trouble for this kind of behavior because she felt I was being “sneaky”. The sleepwalker “diagnosis” was a relief in a way, because it excused some of the behavior I had been punished for in the past. However, it was not something that she relied on consistently and she would continue to punish me on and off until I was in my late teens.

At the age of 12, I woke up in the front yard with the doors to the house locked up tight. I can remember the feeling of hopelessness as I realized I had no explanation for my situation and that this would be a major transgression in my parent’s eyes. I sat for at least a half an hour against the tree in the yard crying and not having any idea of what I should do. Finally, I had to ring the doorbell and face the consequences. Needless to say, my father was shocked to see me when he answered the door and never quite accepted my story of sleepwalking. As I recall, I was grounded for weeks, amongst other things. Still, I didn’t wonder or think too much about these incidents. They happened time and again, and in very many ways, it was just a part of life. I can’t think of any period of time when events like this did not happen to me. Why question something that has been going on your entire life?