In retrospect it seems nearly impossible to explain the fear I had of this particular sound. It confuses me why I never thought of it being an alarm clock, and I question now if that’s even what it was. I also wonder why nobody ever stopped this horrendous noise, because it would play through the middle of the night. Its first introduction to me was during a dream, in my childhood, in which I woke up crying and crawled to the corner of my room, fearful of moving and waiting until the sun came up. I spent a lot of my childhood on that floor, and continued this habit until my mid-teens. It became my safe spot, that furry, charcoal gray and black carpeted floor made in the early 90’s.

I would sneak into the living room in the middle of the night, after being awakened from this sound, and peek through the slits of the blinds, trying to stealthily unveil the source of evil emanating from this bleating, nightmarish rhythm. Just across the street was a streetlight, and its light shone heavily on the side of the house I slept in. Deep in my gut, I felt as if this sound was bellowing from the darkest parts of the night, fixating on torturing my sleep and introducing anxiety into my life.

When I was around 16 and living with friends and girlfriends, I always had to have a movie playing before I fell asleep. Silence and blackness terrified me, and I’d focus on the ringing in my ears so intensely that no amount of exhaustion would succumb to slumber. I’d go through phases of different movies, and their playback loops of the DVD menu would ingrain itself in my head. If I awoke early, but was too sleepy to turn the T.V. off, I’d fall asleep again and that loop would be incorporated into my dreams. It’s not hard to recall the Harry Potter or Shrek DVD menus to this day. It’s during this phase that my sleep phobia was its worst. I’d catch myself in the cusp of sleep’s grasp and a jolt of fear would surge through me as I thought I was dying. This incorporation of death and sleep began hard to shake off for many years.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the narrator in Proust’s “Search”, and I can’t help but feel linked to those moments in the bedroom where sleep becomes a giant in the corner. It’s funny how much you can remember of your past in reading someone else’s words, and in what arrangement words can be put so as to unlock the doors of memory. In a way it brings some relief knowing I’m not the only one who has/had a somewhat childish fear.