by Various
At first she didn't believe them. These were teenage girls after all, and apt to pull a prank like this on her. Like the time they smeared shaving cream on Jenny Alberton's hands and then waved a feather over her face. Now that was funny. But this was different. This was no harmless prank. These girls hadn't done something to her. Emma had done something to herself. Something that she had no recollection of. Something disgusting.
"I didn't eat any cake last night," she fumbled.
But by later on that day, after she'd had time to clean herself and interrogate her friends more lucidly, she was certain that they hadn't made it up. Besides, Mrs. Hudson had been saving that cake for Judy's sister's birthday, which made Emma feel extremely guilty, and for which she apologized to no end.
She found smears of frosting inside her sleeping bag, crusted onto her pillow case, stuck to her hair. She was disturbed. Frightened. Unnerved. To borrow an expression from her teenage years, freaked out. Who wouldn't be? It's one thing to talk in your sleep, or even to walk in your sleep-but who ever heard of eating in your sleep? She tried to block it out, to write it off as an odd occurrence, a once in a lifetime fluke, a story to laugh about then ultimately forget. And for a while she really believed that it would never happen again.
But it did.
The problem persisted throughout college, the circumstances varying, but always with the same end result. Embarrassment. Frustration. Self loathing. Her roommate Lindsey would often report the events to her the next day, as offhandedly as possible, pretending that it was no big deal, nothing to really worry about. Emma wondered what Lindsey said about her behind her back.
She dated as infrequently as possible, quickly realizing the potential that she had to disturb and sometimes frighten her bedside partners. Like the time she went home with Christopher Hankins, the guy from her American Lit. class who she'd had her eye on for an entire semester. The same guy who woke her up in the middle of the night, shaking her until she stirred, only to find herself standing in his kitchen, nude, her hands and face coated with Aunt Jemima syrup. And the whole time him saying, "You'll wake up my roommate, what's wrong with you?" It was bad enough for Emma to have to cope with her unsavory condition every night, but to bring someone else into the game was just plain unacceptable.
After college she moved into an apartment by herself, anxious for privacy and freedom from embarrassment. But the problem only got worse. How many mornings had she awoken with a foul taste in her mouth, and that all too familiar feeling of nausea and dread which seemed to spill forth from her dream state and into the waking world? She couldn't remember them all. But the worst ones, the most awful discoveries, she could hardly forget. Like the time she woke up with shiny, greasy hands and lips, later to realize that she'd eaten four entire sticks of butter. Or the morning she found an empty package of uncooked hot dogs, which gave her gas and sat in her stomach all day long. There was the jar of cocktail onions which she had thoroughly consumed, down to the last drop of vinegar, a taste she was not able to rid from her mouth for a week. All too often Emma would awaken to discover traces of her nightly raids still clinging to her bed sheets, an unpleasant reminder of her nightly excursions.
Clues.
Leftovers.
Evidence.
In her sheets she found olive pits and chicken bones. Cheerios and egg shells. Crumbs and crusts and things unidentifiable. Stains of every color and texture. And once, the worst morning ever, the humiliating discovery of leftover bits and pieces of raw ground beef, moist and wretched and rotting. The remains of hamburger patties that she had been saving for a barbecue that coming weekend.
It was like the old Groucho Marx joke, her father once said, about the guy who dreamt he was eating a giant marshmallow. He woke up to discover that his pillow was gone. The only difference was that Emma could never remember her dreams. At least, none that had to do with her peculiar eating habits. When she slept, it was as if she were down for the count, completely subdued, sentenced to limbo. And that was the worst part. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to her actions.
It wasn't that Emma was fat, or that she had problems controlling her eating habits throughout the day. In fact she was more or less on the thin side, and wasn't prone to gorging herself or overeating. She just couldn't control herself at night. Literally. It was then, when the world was still, as she lay in quiet limbo, sunk deep into the mud, that her subconscious mind would take over and glutton itself without remorse. And it was this, the complete lack of willpower, the utter absence of self restraint, that tore her apart more than anything. She began to doubt that such a thing as free will really existed. In her mind she was simply cursed.
Her morning ritual became an exercise in first determining what she had eaten, then washing the bed sheets should it be necessary, and sometimes forcing herself to throw up. To cleanse herself. To exorcise her inner demons and the food they were so fond of devouring.
She tried several attempts to thwart herself. Her first idea was to set booby traps around the apartment. It seemed reasonable enough. Before going to sleep, she would rearrange the furniture in the hallway leading from her bedroom to the kitchen. Obstructing the path with chairs, a coffee table, a suitcase; anything and everything she could find that might trip her up in her sleep, awaken her at the crucial moment before disaster. But after a week of trying this new routine she gave up, frustrated to discover each morning that she had somehow managed to maneuver around the clutter in the night, her subconscious mind always getting the better of her.
Next she tried hiding her food in hard to reach places. High shelves and locked cabinets. She even bought a padlock which, after some effort, she managed to secure to the door of her refrigerator. This plan seemed foolproof. In a way she succeeded, as the goodies she craved were literally impossible to get at. But the morning after making the final preparations she woke up with a bitter taste on her palate, and was mortified to discover that she had eaten a sandwich consisting of two slices of stale bread loaded with several beef bouillon cubes. The only food her unrelenting body had been able to find. She was at her wit's end, and all too often would cry herself to sleep, for what little good it did.
Several more years of torment passed before Emma finally sought treatment. At first it seemed like a godsend, a burst of light illuminating the dark abyss where her mind insisted on wandering. The revelation that she was not alone with this torment came from out of the blue, like a letter in the mail telling you you've just won a prize. Publisher's Clearinghouse for the soul. Her friend Lara had been listening to the radio one afternoon while stuck in traffic, and had heard a talk radio program whose topic was sleep disorders. As she listened, thankful to have something for her ears to focus on besides TV show advertisements and Britney Spears songs, she heard a woman talking about a habit that her husband had had for years. A habit that involved getting up in the middle of the night and banging his fists against the walls while screaming bloody murder, sometimes injuring himself in the process. A habit that frightened her to no end, and which she thought she'd just always have to live with. That is, until he was referred to the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, and discovered that he wasn't alone.
Lara shared this discovery with Emma over brunch one afternoon. At first hesitant to even broach the subject, knowing that it would embarrass Emma to no end, she beat around the bush until she finally couldn't hold it in any longer. Unknown to her, Emma had had a wretched morning, waking up to discover three strips of bacon and dozens of frozen French fries, now soggy, clinging to her soiled nightgown. At first the conversation was awkward, but soon Emma brightened up and was even able to make eye contact with her friend as she listened to the good news.
"You're not alone Emma. There's doctor's out there to deal with kind of this stuff. And there's probably even a cure."
Lara eventually dropped the topic and switched to something else, sensing that her friend had gotten all the information she needed to make up her own mind.
&
nbsp; The next day Emma made a call and scheduled an appointment to meet with one of the doctors at the Sleep Disorders Center. She had a hard time admitting over the phone what her problem was, but the receptionist was tactful and used to dealing with uncomfortable patients, and in the end Emma felt a wave of hope that she never thought to find. Never thought existed.
She was received warmly at the center, and soon found herself able to admit even the most traumatizing of events to Doctor Fletcher, the woman who had been assigned to help her. Emma was pleased to have a woman doctor on her side, as she often had trouble relating to men, the effect of years of shying away from even the most casual of encounters.
The doctor listened to her story and took notes, nodding her head and offering sympathetic comments, all the while radiating an aura of compassionate understanding. She then explained to Emma that she suffered from a condition known as Sleep-Related Eating Disorder, or "S.R.E.D." for short. While not a very common affliction, it still came as a tremendous relief to Emma who assumed, for year upon gut wrenching year, that she alone was the bearer of such an unsettling inclination.
A week later Emma spent the night at the lab, sealed up in a room that contained a one way mirror overlooking a bed, nightstand and refrigerator. A door in the rear led to a small bathroom, but otherwise Emma was confined to the observational space. The doctors applied electrodes to her head, which they told her could be slightly uncomfortable, but Emma, excited at the prospect of finding a cure, fell asleep with little effort.
Watching herself the next day on a video that had recorded the night's events was one of the most difficult things she'd ever had to do. But, summoning up the strength, Emma observed her bizarre nocturnal behavior, as Doctor Fletcher gently described the options available. She ultimately prescribed a dopamine enhancing medication combined with Tylenol 3, which she felt confident would alleviate the problem. Emma's spirits soared, and that night in bed when she cried it wasn't out of shame, but rather from an overwhelming sense of relief.
The results were amazing. Within a week, Emma was sleeping soundly, for the first time since childhood nodding off without the distasteful dread of having to wake up the next morning. Her confidence improved exponentially, and before long she got up the nerve to start approaching men again. A year later she met Craig Beaumont.
Craig was a substitute teacher who worked periodically at Stony Hills, the grammar school where Emma taught. They exchanged small talk in the cafeteria one day, and soon they were seeing each other on a regular basis. The first time he spent the night she felt some trepidation, painful memories reminding her of previous disasters, but her fears were thankfully unfounded. She finally felt like a regular person. A regular person in control of her life.
As the months passed, they continued to date each other, and Emma continued to take her medication, sometimes forgetting that she had ever even had a sleeping problem. Two years later they married, and before long she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. They named him Peter, after her grandfather, and looked forward to the years ahead. They put a down payment on a small house, big enough for the three of them with room to expand, and settled into family life. Emma was in heaven.
Then the problem resurfaced.
The trouble began in an unusual way. Emma woke up one morning with an extremely painful crawling sensation in her legs. It felt like a thousand tiny spiders writhing and biting, devouring her skinny white thighs and calves. Her first reaction was to throw the sheets off of her body, instinctually fearing that she was under attack. Looking down she noticed nothing out of the ordinary. But the feeling wouldn't go away.
In response to her frantic phone call, Doctor Fletcher explained that she was suffering from a condition known as Restless Legs Syndrome, a side effect of the medication she was on. The first strains of panic were already beginning to consume Emma, who had actually come to believe that she would live the rest of her life without unrest. A few days later her fears were magnified, when she woke up to find an empty bag of Frito Lay's occupying the pillow beside her. Craig was still asleep, and she hurriedly discarded the evidence before he began to stir. Later she called in sick to work.
Entering the sleep clinic for the first time in over two years, the familiar haunting sense of doom suddenly overcame her, no longer dormant. She had to pause for a moment before going inside, taking several deep breaths and counting to ten, telling herself to get a grip, everything's going to be all right. But this wasn't to be the case.
Dr. Fletcher calmly explained that due to the recurrence of sleep disorder activity, there was nothing they could do besides bring her in for more study. More tests. More poking and prodding and hoping to use her as a case study for future cures. Cures that weren't available to Emma herself.
She stopped taking the pills after that meeting, as they were now only good for giving her horribly itchy legs that hurt and burned and made her want to scream. Without the medication her problem flared up worse than ever, and it wasn't long before Craig naturally started to notice. She'd wanted to tell him about it when they'd met, but had always found a reason to avoid the subject. After all, she thought that she'd had the problem licked. Now, of course, the conversation was unavoidable.
At first he was understanding, sympathetic even, and promised her that it made no difference. They were strong. They would get through it together. But in the months that followed, she found him getting more and more irritable, to the point that he was even making wry remarks when his ill temper got the best of him. Like the night she accidentally burnt their dinner and apologized, only to hear him reply, "Well, at least only one of us will go hungry tonight."
It wasn't that Craig was inconsiderate or lacked compassion, his bitterness was simply due to the strain that Emma's condition was putting on their marriage. She had become melancholy and self-conscious again, uncomfortable sharing a bed with him, and often opted for spending the night alone on their couch. Sometimes she'd stay up half the night cradling her son, talking to him, telling him not to worry, desperately trying to encourage herself more so than him. Deep down she feared that Peter would grow up to suffer the same fate and this thought plagued her to no end.
It didn't really come as much of a shock when Craig decided to move out. To "put some space between them," he said. To "give them both some time to think."
He swore that it had nothing to do with her problem, but she knew the truth. The curse had gotten the best of her in the end, no two ways about it. She watched him go without a word, forcing a smile as he told her his plans.
"I'm going out to California for a while, to visit my parents. But I'll be back for Thanksgiving. And then we'll just…take it from there. All right?"
As his car backed out of the driveway, she felt a pang of despair well up from deep in her gut, and knew that somehow, some way, she had to think of something.
The revelation came a few weeks later.
Emma was teaching her third grade class one day when it dawned on her. She was giving her students the assignment of writing a short poem, a hobby that she herself enjoyed. First, she explained the basic rhyming scheme as simply as possible. On the blackboard she wrote:
A
B
A
B
She pointed to the letters and explained what they meant: A rhymes with A, B rhymes with B. They were free to choose any topic they liked, and Emma suggested that if they had a hard time thinking of something they should write about themselves. While they labored away, the sound of pencils scratching on colored paper filling the room, she wrote a poem for herself before she even realized what she was doing:
Late at night as she'd fall asleep
Her will gave in to SRED,
Letting go what was hers to keep
Poor Emma the sleepy head
By now she had come to think of herself as two separate people. One, the person that she saw when she looked in the mirror: Emma Myers, schoolteacher, mildly attractive, thirty-two years old, brown hair, blue
eyes, recently separated. But the other Emma, whom she came to refer to as the sleepy head- this was an entirely different persona, her arch-nemesis, her alter ego. And it was this Emma that needed to be stopped. The realization that she could fight back against the gluttonous side of herself was the breakthrough. The problem was that she had been going about it all wrong. Booby traps and medication and locks on the refrigerator were not the answer. She needed to find a cure for the ailment instead of just treating the symptoms.
Determined to beat this thing on her own terms, she began a new series of tactics. Talking to herself, encouraging herself, training herself. Pushing her concentration to the limit, she would meditate as she drifted off to sleep, repeating over and over the mantra she had created:
Time to sleep, but not to eat,
The sleepy head is mine to beat…
Slowly but surely, the plan paid off. She found that with enough self encouragement, enough willpower, she could keep the sleepy head at bay. It wasn't foolproof for sure, but it helped. She still found crumbs and crusts, occasional stains and smears, but nothing grotesque. Nothing she couldn't handle. Nothing that made her cringe.
What she found most interesting was that with effort she could restrain herself from eating certain foods. If she made up her mind not to touch the leftovers from dinner, she'd find that she ate the dessert instead. If she focused on not eating raw foods, she'd settle for prepared ones. One morning she cracked herself up after discovering that she had actually microwaved a frozen pizza during the night before consuming it. The problem wasn't gone, not by a long shot, but it was getting better. Little by little, day by day, she felt herself gaining control. She was fighting back. And all the while she knew that she was preparing herself for the true test of her spirit. The biggest challenge was just around the corner.
Craig had said that he would be back for Thanksgiving, but he couldn't have realized at the time just how pivotal a day this would be. Emma decided to host the holiday, inviting her parents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, and of course Craig. She had never done this in the past, never would have even dreamed of it. But she knew that this year she had to. It was the only way. The ultimate battle. If she could stock up her refrigerator with all of the essentials, every tasty morsel that would make for a terrific feast, and then restrain herself from sabotage, she was as good as cured. And maybe Craig would come back to stay. This she cared about deeply, not so much for herself, but for the sake of their one-year-old son, who she felt deserved the benefit of a father in his life.
