Another weird night, though this time the ague headed for my brain rather than my stomach. I woke up in an inexplicable panic about something in the early hours and then couldn't get to sleep, feeling claustrophobic and confused and a bit afraid. Scrooge blames the first apparition he sees on an undigested piece of food, coming up with a pun which is delightfully dissed in the Muppet Christmas Carol of "it has more of the gravy than the grave", but was this mad terror the result of too much cheese and too many sprouts? I felt haunted and unhappy and a voice in my brain seemed to try to disconcert me by thinking of all the bad things that could happen in my life. I wondered if by awakening Me2 from his quarter of a century of sleep that he might now be on the point of taking me over or taking me down. In the dark night in a largely unfamiliar house I felt like I might be about to tip over into the abyss. It was pretty horrible.
This kind of thing has happened to me before, though mainly when I was drinking a lot and not for some time and I think it's a common phenomenon to wake up feeling unsettled and off. In menage a un (at least in the Edinburgh version - I think I forgot about it by the time I did the DVD) I made a bleak joke (or statement really) about what if those times you wake up and the world feels desolate and awful and terrifying and you feel worthless and pointless are the reality and the rest of the time we're deluding ourselves. People seemed to understand what I meant. But even though I knew that when this has happened before I have woken up and all is fine, it still felt like that wouldn't be the case this time. I was scared to fall asleep lest the negativity that seemed to be filling the room pervaded my whole being and destroyed me. In that sleep of madness what dreams would come?
It's not just the gluttony and the gravy that was responsible though. It's been a busy and stressful few days of driving and socialising and having no time to ourselves and I have a bit of a cold which might have added to the brain fever and I wondered if that brief visit to the scary wrong corridor in my gran's home had also had an affect. You start to worry about losing your mind and then begin to imagine how that might be. There must be a point where the slip occurs and even if it wasn't happening now, then it would at some point. Life is futile and grubby and ridiculous. We slip from the delusion of sanity into the whirlwind of insanity into the emptiness of the void.
I guess if you're worrying about it then it probably isn't happening, but for an hour or so in the quiet of the night it felt like the anchor of my life had come loose and that all I believed to be true was just a delusion. And maybe I had been right before, maybe these night terrors are our only lucid moments - they certainly feel like it at the time. If I was at home I'd have gone and watched TV for a bit, but I was at my girlfriend's parents' house and it was packed with visitors and there was someone sleeping on the sofa. I had a walk along the corridor and tried to settle down. Nothing seemed to work. If this had been last night I might actually have tried to go in and sleep with my mum and dad and hope that that would scare away the demons, but could I try that with my girlfriend's parents. I don't know them all that well and they might think I was odd if I told them I was scared and needed to be held by them both. They quite like me I think, so they might have given it a go. But it would have led to some awkwardness I think.
I tried to stay awake to avoid meeting Freddie in my nightmares, but at some point fatigue overcame fear and aside from an odd dream where I was back on holiday having breakfast and a big wave (not a tsunami, but this was obviously the inspiration) filled the restaurant. It wasn't that scary though. We had fun trying to escape it and the staff diligently attempted to rescue the breakfast items. Even in the dreamscape they were top notch. I should post them a tip.
And the morning came and all was fine. Even my cold wasn't as bad as I feared. I was back on an even keel and no longer afraid. But which state was the madness and which the reality? (the answer is last night's is the madness). I felt tired (and once we got back home this evening I realised just how exhausted I have been) but got back into the Christmas fun, ate another Christmas dinner (in pie form this time) and played my girlfriend's grandma at Scrabble. Obviously decorum suggested that I should not be too competitive and should maybe take my foot off the gas and not utilise my undoubted Scrabble expertise and probably let her win. But fuck decorum. I was going to take this sweet and charming old lady to the cleaners. I mean it was Christmas so on a couple of goes I didn't use my 2 letter word knowledge to the full (I didn't play XU at one point even though I'd have got more points), but I didn't let up on tactics and I won with comfort. My girlfriend's gran took it all with good grace, but clearly felt I was a dick. "That was an interesting game," she tartly commented. She had learned much about me. I suspect that she will be advising her grand-daughter to escape while she still can. But I would rather live my life alone and in perpetual night terror than deliberately throw a game of Scrabble. If my girlfriend's family can't see that that makes me the big man here, then they don't deserve me or my impending loss of all reason. At least I didn't dance around shouting "Yes, in your face, old woman! Not as good at Scrabble as you thought are you?" And believe me, I wanted to.
