Sleep Talk and Teeth

One of the most unexpected side-effects of the Invisalign treatment I’ve been having has been a dramatic increase in the number of “OMG, my teeth are all falling out!” nightmares I usually have: in fact, I’ve gone from maybe one per month to one every couple of days, which is, er, fun. (Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those, “Look, here’s a really long explanation of a dream I had last night!” stories, which always involve some kind of kerrazy, wacky shenanigans and are as totally dull to hear about as they are bizarre to experience. “And then the elephant turned into a phone box! And the phone box was my teeth!”) I also wake up gagging every morning now. Hey, this is one of my best opening paragraphs ever, isn’t it?

(I’ve read that dreams about your teeth falling out symbolize your feelings of powerlessness. I guess that could be true – I mean, I AM pretty powerless – but I’ve always suspected it just happens because losing your teeth as a child is actually a pretty traumatic thing to go through. Seriously, parts of your body are in the process of dropping off: that has to affect you in some way, surely? And sure, your conscious mind may be thinking, “Hey, another one down! I wonder what the tooth fairy will give me for this bad boy?” but your unconscious mind has to be thinking, “WHOA! Parts of the body are FALLING OFF! I will never forget this, EVER, and many years from now, when she has long since forgotten all about it, I will remind her of the horror through the medium of a dream!” And, obviously, in my case, the dreams could just mean that I’m having Invisalign treatment which is making my teeth move. It could just be that.)

The sleep-talking has also started up again, although I think that has more to do with my general state of mind than with the Invisalign. In fact, last night I woke Terry up to tell him, “Some rubbish about something in the living room.” Terry can’t remember any of the details about this, but apparently I told him that if he “watched the programme” he’d “learn more about it.”

Oookaaaay.

What’s weird about these incidents is that I can normally remember them perfectly clearly when I wake up, because at some point during them I generally become aware that it’s “that thing again” and that I am, in fact, talking crap. I even apologise for it. A few nights ago, for instance, I woke Terry up by plucking repeatedly at his shoulder. When he opened his eyes and glared at me, I shied back in alarm and said:

“SPIDER! SPIDER! There’s a spider on your shoulder!”

(I had clearly seen this spider, by the way. It wasn’t a big one, but it had enormous legs and, well, I didn’t want it to finish whatever it was it was doing with Terry and move on to me. I guess we’re just lucky it was a spider, and not my more-usual, OMFG THERE IS A CRAB IN MY BED hallucination. I’m normally halfway down the hall before I “wake up” from that one, and even then, Terry has to ostentatiously “search” the bed before I’ll get back in. Those bed-dwelling crustaceans are just the pits, aren’t they?)

Terry continued to glare at me, unmoved. “No,” he said, “There’s not. NOT. Go back to sleep.”

“There WAS!” I insisted. “There was a spider on your shou…oh. I’m doing that thing again, aren’t I?”

Terry nodded.

“OK,” I said, “Sorry about that! Also: I realise it’s totally implausible, and that I’m just doing That Thing, but if you could just let me check again…”

Terry turned his back on me and went to sleep.

And I lay awake for about ten minutes thinking, “Spider on his shoulder! Spider on his shoulder! Oh my God, there was totally a spider! On! His! Shoulder!”

Then, last night? Last night I dreamt that Nigel was mowing his lawn while naked. That has nothing to do with sleep-talking, actually, but I thought I’d note it anyway…

(P.S. I created a Facebook page for this site: it actually seemed like a pretty weird thing to be doing for a personal blog, but I know I tend to use FB and Twitter more than RSS these days for the purposes of “following”, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. You’ll find it here, and if you “like” the page, you’ll get updates from me on your Facebook wall. Now won’t that be fun?)