On sleepwalking

For the last few years, I have had rare (my parents see it once every 3 or 4 months) and extremely insignificant sleepwalking episodes. I walk around the second floor a few times and eventually make it back to bed. If one of my parents see me walking the second floor late at night, they issue the quick and easy sleepwalking test: “Hey Kev, are you sleepwalking?” If I say “no,” they know I’m not sleepwalking, but if I respond with unidentifiable mumbles, they escort me back to bed. Up until recently, from what my parents have seen, the most advanced task I have done is traverse the hallways, possibly holding a pillow and get a drink.

A few weeks ago, I started having more peculiar sleepwalking bouts. On the second week of school, while sleepwalking, I turned on the lights to my room, took off and folded my pajamas, put on an outfit (surprisingly, one which matched and worked well aesthetically), charged my phone and go back in bed. This weekend, my parents saw me sleepwalking on the first floor for the first time. I came down stairs with my pillow, walked in a loop for a minute or two, placed my pillow on my computer, and laid down on a recliner. After a few minutes, my mom decided to intervene and brought me back to my room.

Knowing that you have done something like this while you were sleeping is an incredibly unique experience. Your own muscles and mind made you perform intricate tasks without you having any recollection of it. When sleepwalking, I am in an alternate mental state that I can’t directly affect or tap into, but controls my mind—you could almost think of it as being possessed… by yourself. Thinking about my mental state when sleepwalking can be fascinating but scary at the same time. It’s as if you are dreaming, but everything you do will affect you in real life. If I am falling off a cliff in a dream, I will be scared, but I’ll probably wake up right before I hit the floor and I’ll be glad that it was just a dream. If I am sleepwalking, and I decide to jump down the stairs, I will wake up in the ER. But there is no way to “prepare” for a sleepwalking episode. I can’t write signs all over the house saying “You are sleepwalking! Don’t do anything stupid!” This is all the more relevant because this weekend my parents saw me go downstairs during an episode recently. Despite how meaningless and innocent It is to give your computer a pillow, this shows that I can walk down the stairs when sleepwalking. I could have just as easily walked out the door or driven the car around the block. This also begs the question: what am I doing when my parents don’t see me? Everything that I know about my past sleepwalking has been through my parents telling me (with the exception of the time when I got dressed). But I usually go to bed after them, and even then, sleepwalking can occur up to 2 hours after going to bed. So, given the amount of times that my parents have seen me sleepwalking, I can reasonably assume that, when I sleepwalk, they usually don’t see me. So, what am I doing then? Hopefully I am merely walking around my room or getting a drink. (Well, Ideally, I would be writing papers and doing homework, but I’ll assume, for simplicity, that’s not the case). It’s also entirely possible that I go outside and walk around my backyard; I have no idea.