I had lots of nights like that over the course of the summer.  Eventually, I had to ask Eric to trade sides of the bed with me so that he slept closer to the door.  I have always had trouble sleeping and suffered from night terrors.  As a kid, I was afraid of the dark and had to sleep with a night light.  One side of my bed had to be pushed against a wall so that I could sleep with my back against it.  The closet door had to be closed because in the dark, the clothes that hung there looked like evil puppets who wanted to eat my brain, the shoes looked like a pile of deadly snakes, and I was sure that there was a secret door which could only be opened at night in the back wall where trolls or aliens could get in and the only magic that could stop them was to keep the closet door closed.  Even as an adult, I find it hard to sleep with a closet door open. 

I can remember as a kid waking up to someone crying, sometimes screaming.  It was terrifying and I initially couldn’t tell who was making all the noise.  Gradually, I would become aware of my mother sitting on the edge of my bed, rubbing my arm and holding my hand in her lap, chanting softly, “It’s okay.  You just had a scary dream, but it wasn’t real.  Everything is okay.”  That’s when I would realize I was the one who’d been screaming.  Other times, I would sleep walk through the house, turning on all the lights as I went, and end up crying and rocking in my dad’s chair in our living room.  I would wake up to his face, leaning in close to mine and saying, “Wake up, Jill.  You need to go back to bed now.”  He would pick me up out of the chair and take me back to my bed.  I would press my face into his white cotton t-shirt as he carried me, wiping the mysterious tears from my face.