The spider dream (or: Never underestimate your brain)

Today seems to have been an intermediate day. I have short stories in progress, and have read other people's too. I made it round to friends' (one of whom has started blogging) place and helped with shopping and appointments. I even got some Gospel of Loki review written, though not an awful lot, since everything was delayed today by a very late start. I woke up at about 2.30am kneeling at the foot of my bed with my hand on the light switch, you see, so I slept in later on.

See, when I get particularly stressed or anxious, my brain decides to punish me with the spider dream. This is almost exactly what it sounds like and arachnaphobes may wish to stop reading here. Suffice it to say that I don't always get a full night's sleep, I can be a little paranoid about spiders in my bedroom, just in case, and I keep a close eye on how I process what's going on around me.

This started off a very long time ago, in the run up to exams at school (possibly GCSEs, so I may have been 16, that formative age when your brain chemistry is a bit off kilter and you're under more stress than you've ever known to boot). I was just nodding off one night when I caught a glimpse of a horrific, huge spider (big, fluffy, tarantula-size) lurking among the books and papers on the floor by my bed. Naturally, I summoned my mother, but no amount of searching could find any sign of it. Somehow she persuaded me to go back to bed and sleep.

For years, I was convinced that that thing had been real and had vanished somewhere in my bedroom.

A while later, I woke to the terrifying scenario of a big, long-legged spider crawling up the covers towards me. I gained full consciousness on the other side of the room with my back against the wall, in tears. It took a lot of effort to drag myself around the corner to get to my bedroom door and run for help. Again, there was no sign of it, though we stripped the bed and shook everything out and remade it. I can't remember properly, but I think I may have gone and slept in the guest bedroom for that one.

The next one was a big spider sitting on the pillow three inches in front of my face. I hit the bedside light and it was gone.

At that point I suddenly realised that it had been dark, absolutely pitch black, in the room. There was no way I could have seen a spider. So I shook the pillows out just in case, checked thoroughly, and talked myself back into bed and sleep.

After that I started applying logic when I woke up in a panic. There couldn't be a tarantula on my bed. The odds against it were astronomical.

My brain fought back, though. If I came up with a logical reason to ignore the panicked awakening and go back to sleep, it would change the scenario. Tarantulas were too farfetched? Okay, so it was just a gangly standard (if overgrown) house spider. It couldn't be crawling up the bed, because I would have felt the weight or heard the rustle? Okay, then it was slowly sliding down from the ceiling on a web. It couldn't possibly be descending from the ceiling on gossamer because when I switched the light on the gossamer wasn't there? Okay, it would be crawling up the headboard instead. I couldn't have seen it so clearly and vividly because there just wasn't enough light in the room, even with street lights or a bright moon muted by the curtains? Okay, then it was just a silhouette, a fuzzy shape, a suggestion of movement.

I checked the ceiling and bed thoroughly for spiders every night, so I'd know for sure. And I really knew for sure that none of them had ever been real when it started happening when I was in other rooms, other houses. Modern, hermetically sealed sorts of places. Hotel rooms with nowhere for them to hide. Friends' rooms that had just been cleaned.

I think it was shortly after that when a close friend started on her medical degree and excitedly brought up hypnagogic hallucinations. She described them as auditory or visual effects that usually strike just as you're about to fall asleep, in the first stages of a sleep cycle, when you think you're still awake but you're not, or if you're halfway through the night and you've almost resurfaced and woken but think you're still fully asleep. They're most commonly voices calling your name. I've never had that, though I've heard of it a lot and it crops up all the time in fiction (usually as a lead in to ghosts or telepathy, to be fair, but it's a common enough effect that most people I've discussed it with have admitted to it happening every now and again). I think I'd much rather have eerie disembodied voices than spiders.

My point (I have a point, honest, though not a particularly blogworthy one, really) is that the brain is weird, and persuasive, and likes to trick itself. This is relevant to a lot of the things I'm writing at the moment.

It's also very odd to be aware of something like this. It makes me step back and think twice about everything, all the time. I overanalyse pretty much everything I think in case my brain is trying to trick me. I cling to logic in everything. At the moment this tends to mean I over-explain everything as well, because I'm aware that most people aren't in the habit of laying down half a dozen logical arguments just to get back to sleep, so I'm a little too eager to present all my reasoned thoughts for whatever choice has come up.

It does help with spotting plotholes, though, I must admit.