I'm Sorry For What I Said In My Sleep

Fish are food company.

I woke up at 2:37am last week to write that in my phone’s notes. I am sure it was a highly intelligent-- nay, genius-- idea, probably the one that would finally get me rich and famous, and let me drop out of college and go live in New Zealand with the hobbits.

Sadly, Sleeping Jess and Waking Jess often have difficulty communicating well with each other. As such, I have no idea what my sleep-soggied self was trying to tell me.

Sleeping Jess isn’t the most eloquent with anyone. And it can cause some real problems for the both of us. We’re supposed to have a deal that she doesn’t talk, text, respond to emails or Snapchats, or go on the internet at all. She’s supposed to lie in bed, keep her mouth shut, and do what she does best.

Unfortunately, all Sleeping Jess ever hears is an infinite loop of Boomerang TV show theme songs.

photo from pexels

(^^ Me checking my computer to find out Sleeping Jess has ruined my life)

This what my bedtime routine generally consists of:

Waking Jess: I have to wake up early tomorrow, so I’m setting the alarm for 6am. Okay?

Sleeping Jess: *Scooby-Doo theme song plays in the background*

Waking Jess: Good. Now, I’m hiding my phone. No getting up in the middle of the night to turn off the alarm. You hear me?

Sleeping Jess: *static; then Dragon Tales starts playing*

[At approximately 4:03am] Sleeping Jess: *gets up, grabs phone from hiding place, turns off alarm, goes back to sleep*

[5.5 hours later] Waking Jess: *sits bolt upright* You’ve gotta be S@#%ing me.

The other issue is the sleep-talking. Sleeping Jess has lots of things to say. She’s also not the most polite person. If you think Waking Jess is bossy and rude… well, just be glad you don’t have to deal with Miss Hyde.

To some extent I knew Sleeping Jess would go off on tangents, if only because of very vague, cloudy memories of interrogating my mom when she’d come wake me up in high school, and the occasional exasperated mumblings of a delirious dreamer. But it’s only been this last year that I’ve realized how chatty she is. I often wake up the next morning to hear from my roommate that Sleeping Jess was really agitated the night before. Apparently, she’s very short-tempered.

Here are some examples:

Sleeping Jess: Knock that off!

Roommate, half-asleep: Eh?

Sleeping Jess: What did I say? Cut it out!

Roommate: Go to sleep.

Sleeping Jess: I mean it. Stop fooling around. You’re getting on my nerves.

Sleeping Jess: You’re doing it wrong. *pause* That’s not the right way. *huffs in anger* Here, let me do it. Let me do it!

Sleeping Jess: Is it snowing outside? Are the roads bad? No, are the roads bad. Yeah, but-- *garbled nonsense* Are the roads bad? Are they BAD??

Sleeping Jess: You really piss me off.

Occasionally, my alter ego helps me out. I hate sleeping with jewelry on, and she’s often kind enough to take out my earrings and put them on my desk, or unclasp my necklace and hang it on the hook near my bed.

Other times, I wake up without any pants, or with a different shirt on. That’s just life with Sleeping Jess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To her credit, she is a hard worker. The summer of my junior year in high school, I worked over 40 hours a week at a fast food restaurant. I’d often wake up to find Sleeping Jess attempting to work an imaginary cash register and wiping down non-existent tables.

But then again, she also has sent some pretty strange text messages. At one point, she texted a friend “Hank get food”. I’m pretty sure she was trying to say she wanted to hang out and get food with them. However, most of the time it’s much harder to decipher what the heck she means.

Maybe everyone has this acid-tripping version of themselves. Maybe Sleeping Jess is like that one family member at reunions who drinks a little too much and talks too loudly. You love ‘em, even when you hate ‘em. Sure she’s pushy and has zero respect for my wishes, but she is pretty no-nonsense, and extremely emphatic when I need some extra sleep.

We just need to work on her communication skills. And her bad attitude.