Dream maker
My Night-Time Job as a Child
When I was little, bedtime was my favourite part of the day and also the part I feared the most. Like a literal irrational fear.
My mum must have thought I was completely mad because I was absolutely petrified of being by myself.
I wasn’t the kind of child who just quietly called for her. I would work myself up into a full-blown panic attack. I’d hyperventilate, throw myself on the floor, completely beside myself until she had no choice but to come back and when she came back, she couldn’t just stay for a few minutes. I would know the second she left the room, even if I was fast asleep. She would end up sitting on my bedroom floor for hours, sometimes all night, just so I could feel safe enough to stay in bed. She left dinner parties, friends downstairs and important events and at the end of the night would always be found by my (probably pissed off ) Dad by the end of my bed asleep.
It sounds intense — and it was — but in between the fear was the thing that made me look forward to bedtime in the first place: my night-time job.
Once I was tucked in after my usual frantic ritual of leaping into bed, pulling the covers up, and tucking my feet in tight, having the odd panic attack and meltdown. I’d start creating dreams in my head. Not just dreams I wanted to have while I was asleep, but dreams I could control. I’d imagine whole stories, people, adventures, even falling in love and I was only about four. These dreams were so elaborate like a whole other world, my complete imagination and a lot of them very intense and intrinsic.
They were my constant this was an everyday desire to go to bed (although I feared it) just so I could be back in them dreams all over again.
It wasn’t about actually going to sleep. It was about that magical moment of lying there and building something beautiful in my mind a beautiful world.
Looking back now, I think this was my very first form of storytelling. Maybe that’s why I loved books then and now because they give me that same sense of escape.
Bedtime became a strange mix of fear and freedom. It was terrifying, the fear of my mum going downstairs and being left alone, but it was also the one time of day when I could make the world exactly how I wanted it to be.
And even though my poor mum had to sit on the floor night after night, I can see now that those moments shaped me. Because under those covers, with my imagination running wild, I was already learning how to tell stories and to turn my fear into something magical.
Thinking back I think it was escapism- I think that was probably the magic.