Sleepwalking Nightmare of Doom

Let this be a warning to you all.  Exercise extreme caution when ingesting any medication with the suffix "PM."  Normally I consider myself pretty impervious to these types of medications since I suffered from extreme insomnia my sophomore year of high school and became immune to any over the counter sleep aide.  However, it's been a while since I've needed that little extra shove into Dreamland, so when I finally decided to just take a pill last night, the effects were stronger than I anticipated.  Last weekend I stayed up for 20 hours straight for NYU's annual Relay For Life for which I am one of the overall event chairs.  I also worked at the hotel (aka got up really early), went to a party (aka stayed up really late), and took a praxis II exam (got up early...you get the idea).  Basically my sleeping schedule was completely out of whack and remained so all week.  I was getting pretty fed up with not being able to fall asleep until 3 and then being awakened by the piercing (but lovely) rays of the sun at 9.  To many of you hardworking people reading this, a 6 hour night does not sound so bad, and it's not - I've been functioning, but I'm an 8 hour girl.  I feel weird and cranky without my full night's sleep.

But I digress.

Last night after popping my pill I was looking forward to 8 (maybe 10!) hours of peaceful slumber.  Instead, I awoke to the sounds of demon voices screeching my name "Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnn."  Startled, I jumped out of bed and stumbled to the door.  When I stepped out into the hallway, the entire apartment was flashing with an eerie blue light.  All around me I heard incomprehensible voices.  I ran to the bathroom, where the screeching resumed. "Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!"  Then suddenly it sounded like people were banging on the walls around me.  As I was sprinting back to my bed, I somehow had the presence of mind to remind myself to write about this in the morning. 

If you can't read that, it says "sleepwalking nightmare of doom!" on a notebook that was beside my bed.  Clearly, I wanted to share this traumatic experience with you all.

After another fretful night's sleep, the sun not only forces my eyes open, but illuminates the true events of last night.  Here is a code to what actually happened:

screeching demonic voices: really damaged breaks of a garbage truck
eerie blue light: the lights from our cable box in the living room
incomprehensible voices: Hamna speaking Urdu in a Skype conversation
more screeching: more bad breaks (really people, go see a mechanic)
banging on the walls: old pipes making noises

I'm fine now, but let this be a lesson to all who are considering taking the medical route to sleep - it might not be as restful as you think.