Waking up can be an ordeal, not just the Monday morning thing… I recently woke up to my own “Twilight Zone” episode, complete with an interior narration, visuals needing double takes, an uneasy sense of a warped timeframe, the near panic and worry of cognitive collapse or just “losing it”, even while an arrogant “self” maintained that my assumptions had to be solid, that my own reality had a concrete grip, and that for some reason technology was failing me (again).
I had been asleep in my own bedroom; I instantly recognized that (cogito, ergo sum, right?) when my smartphone dinged with a notification. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. I did notice that the screen said 5:30 or so, and the notification was of a message from “A” to “B,” from West Coast to East Coast. I thought why the hell would “A” send her message so early? The window shades were up a bit, so I could see that the sky was already a light gray. These days, I sometimes find myself alert really early; it’s not anxiety or eagerness, it’s just an inability to go back to sleep.
This time, I did get up to the bathroom but I noticed that I was still fully dressed. I also noticed that my watch was off, still being charged. I usually wear it at night to monitor sleep, but keep it on all morning until mid day. I thought I must have been so tired, I fell asleep totally clothed and also forgot to put on my watch!
So I did put on my watch, noticed it said Tuesday, but I thought: no, it’s Wednesday morning! I glanced out the window again: it was gray and maybe lighter. I remember taking “B” to the airport Monday, to fly back to her East Coast home. I also remembered a phone conference with “C”, who is local, on Tuesday morning, our regular appointment. So why was my watch wrong? Was there a power outage with a damaging surge, or charger problem again, or an update problem?!
I began to think that there was an Internet glitch, since there were global outages of this and that recently, either accidental or malicious. Maybe one happened while I was asleep, so my phone & watch were off schedule! I turned the devices off and on again: they still said Tuesday.
Puzzled more than anything, I went back to the bathroom because I had “morning stubble.” I shaved, brushed my teeth, and washed my face. The light through the bathroom windows was enough.
The battery clock in the bathroom by this time was saying 6:15 or so. With a three hour time difference, I tried calling “B” on the East Coast for an outside verification of the time, but she didn’t answer. I was thinking about calling “D,” a local psychiatrist friend, since I was beginning to have a faint suspicion I was having a delusion, but thought, no, that would be rude, it’s still too early.
Concepts about time dilation, quantum effects, and themes from science fiction movies darted through my head. It was like an episode from TV’s “The Twilight Zone” from decades ago, with weird, unexplainable phenomena. And then I had ideas about a mental/cognitive breakdown, a psychosis that was “coming to take me away, ho ho, hee hee, ha ha!” [ the comedy song by Napoleon XIV, 1966].
I ended up calling “E,” a friend who also lived three hours ahead. When he answered, I blurted out first: “Hey, what time is it?” …he was amused, and cordial, then confirmed that for him it was 9:30…so I growled: “C’mon man, AM or PM?!”
He said it was at night, meaning that it was 6:30 PM here. I looked out the window and it was just gray and bright, still looking just like morning to me… but when I walked over to really look out, I realized…I couldn’t even tell, it was just densely gray and featureless.
[actual pictures from a window during the episode, one 7 PM (top), one 7 AM (bottom), 12 hours apart]
As I relayed to “E” why I was calling, I slowly understood that I had indeed fallen asleep, on my bed, but it was an afternoon nap, on Tuesday, so it was “normal” that I was fully clothed. But I usually napped on a couch for an hour or so. I wasn’t wearing my watch because I do take it off sometimes during naps, to get it charged for the night. This was a deeper and much longer nap than usual, and I woke up around dinnertime. The weather, which can be relentlessly gray and featureless in these parts, had fooled me badly.
I guess it really was a delusion, a delusion that I had created myself, my own assumptions with the conspiratorial collusion of local atmospheric conditions.
“E” and I had a great conversation that ranged from his own experience with Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” to my recent readings in a short book on epistemology, “how do we know what we know.” I also mentioned “Huis Clos” by Sartre and “Waiting for Godot” by Beckett… it was pertinent, I thought, maybe a different kind of delusion with hubris, showing off a pompous memory… but in retrospect, really demonstrating a desperate need to prove that this situation wasn’t the stark onset of dementia or madness. Maybe it was masked panic at recognizing my time distortion/ delusion/ confusion, because I did not think it was funny.
“E” paused about three seconds (if my sense of time had returned to “normalcy”, relativity speaking, ignoring any nano delays engendered by using two cellular devices with their intrinsic electronic to sonic processing time) and he said, slowly, “sounds like ‘confusional arousal.’ ”
I had to look that up. A doctor can bill for that, since it has an ICD-11 code, 7B00.0, “disorders of arousal from non-REM sleep”, a parasomnia under Sleep-Wake Disorders. DSM-5 also has it under “NREM Sleep Arousal Disorders.”
Maybe that’s what it was, not the space-time wrinkle I had envisioned. Since some feel that the brain’s area for time perception may not be localized, I’m hoping it was not a pinpoint stroke or transient ischemic attack. I had not taken any new meds or any other agents.
I still have almost daily naps and poor interrupted sleep at night. My Internet has had serious slowdowns, there have been power outages around here with a recent brutal windstorm, but the mornings and afternoons seem distinct again. Whether I’m starting to lose it or I’m succumbing to dementia will still have to depend on others, I guess. But this old guy learned a new term that I’m glad I never had to deal with before, and haven’t had to since then. And I’m really glad it wasn’t a parasomnia like “exploding head syndrome”!
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