I am usually a calm person and a morning person. I love the way the sun rises over the hills outside my window. It is a wonderful treat that I get every morning. But if I am woken up for any reason in the middle of the night, other than needing to answer nature, I become this evil person. My 12 pound Shih Tzu once decided to lick my face at 2AM and I literally pushed him off the bed and felt no remorse until the next day. Thankfully that did not hurt him and needless to say he has not done that since. It’s the same with phone calls or any other interruption. Does any one else have this type of reaction or know why I might react this way?
I’m that way until noon.
I’m that way for a few hours after I go to sleep - I’ll take a swing at you if you try to wake me within that window. I’m instantly myself if I get woken up after more than 4 hours or so, so I guess my personality is down for maintenance when I first go to sleep.
Don’t take this as having anything to do with you, it’s just an odd anecdote told to me 2 nights ago by a friend working in mental health. He has just acquired a client who becomes schizophrenic after suffering seizures. However he has these seizures while asleep. So he goes to bed a normal guy and then wakes up in the morning paranoid, hearing voices etc with no awareness that anything has happened.
More in line with your experience, my son when he was about 3 or 4 came in the bedroom at night and to wake me up grabbed my eyelid and opened my eye. The look I gave him so terrified him that he ran away and never woke me again, always choosing his mother after that. This despite the fact that I never even spanked him.
Automagic, I know you’re not my niece because she can’t type yet - she’s 2, so if she could type I’d be kind of worried.
She’s an early riser, but still in need of afternoon naps. Let her wake on her own at either time, she’s the sunniest kid in the world. If she’s asleep and you need to move her, you can “tchtchtch” when she stirs and send her back to sleep, and then she’ll again wake whenever and as sunny as usual.
But waker her up when she still needs her sleep at your own peril…
I used to have a girlfriend several decades ago who used to say she wanted me to wake her up in the middle of the night for nooky because it was a favourite fantasy. So once when I was staying over I woke up in middle of the night so I thought I should oblige. I started gently trying to wake her up but she snarled at me viciously to leave her alone and went back to sleep. She was seriously angry. If I remember correctly her words were something like “WHAT THE F$%K DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING WAKING ME UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?”
Needless to say I was a bit put out by this, given that it was her idea in the first place, so the next morning I asked her about it. She could only half remember it happening, she was sheepish about it because she knew she had treated me badly but still maintained she really wanted me to try again because she really like the idea.
So next time I stayed over I tried again.
Same thing.
Next morning she apologised again but accepted that she had to admit that in reality she was so grumpy when woken that her fantasy was going to have to remain merely that.
I believe that it was Robert Heinlein or one of his characters that said that waking someone unnecessarily shouldn’t be a capital offense…the first time.
When does it start back up?
Happens to me all the time (although I think it might be arguable whether “normal” for me is “happy.”)
In my case, I have insomnia where I sometimes cannot fall asleep. Once I fall asleep though, I’m fine. On a couple of occasions where I’ve been woken up during the transition to full sleep, this has triggered a rage response.
Hell, my cat once bit my ear in the middle of the night - I threw her 10 feet across the room, and I still don’t feel any remorse. She landed on her feet, didn’t she?
Once, when I was living in a dorm-like arrangement, my next-door neighbors decided to hold a party in the middle of the night when I had to be up at 4 the following morning, I pulled on my pants, strode into their room, kicked their tape deck with my bare feet until it stopped making noise, and went back to sleep. Lunch the following day was… awkward.
I’m that way until my first gulp of coffee or noon, whichever is first, if I’m forced to be around people.
A sample missive sent during such an incident in dead earnest: “Send coffee. People breathing.” And these were my own family who I’d invited to visit to boot.
I once was asked by a college fried to wake him for an event he wanted to attend. I went to his room and shook him awake, and reminded him of the event.
He peered at me through slitted eyes. Then he spoke. “I don’t want to go to your event. I don’t want you to be here. I don’t even like you. NOBODY likes you.”
I walked out, highly amused (I knew he couldn’t have been fully aware of what he was saying), and went to the event. About half an hour later he came boiling in, unshaven and still buttoning a shirt, and asked, “Oh God, did I say something terrible???”
The moment I wake up. I seriously leave my work phone on automatic voicemail forward til 11:30 or 12 everyday. I am no condition to speak to other people in the morning.
I am cranky in the night, too. I fight for blankets and steal them all, and am totally grumpy if you wake me. I’ve managed to tone this down, having slept with someone now for almost fourteen years, but I still don’t like chatting before my first cup of coffee. You would think my SO would realize this by now.
This all brings up an interesting question - where do you draw the line between ‘grumpy’ and ‘evil’?
Good God I’m glad I don’t have to be around any of you.
I will reflexively attack anything within an area of personal space (that shouldn’t be there) simply because I have no idea who this is awakening me but, once I ascertain that there is no harm meant, I either go back to sleep or get excited for whatever interesting thing required me to break from existing habits.
During the multiple 3AM fire alarms at my college dorm (people seemed to think it was a great joke), I was the guy who was fully dressed and alert, not one of the people stumbling out in their pajamas whining.
I’m getting some vague memory of when I was a kid, something about my mom waking me up when I was about 7 or so. I’m pretty sure I lowered my voice to sound like Satan and murmured “Leave Us.”. I think I’ll ask her if I was ever possessed at one time.
And I’d have to say I’m pretty consistently evil throughout the night, especially since that’s when I do most of my posting. 