Alone, listening to things that go bump in the night
By yourself, you hear every little thing
I was in bed the other night trying to sleep when I heard a swishing sound. I told myself it was a wind-blown tree branch brushing against the house, but then I got to thinking about how every little sound is amplified when you live alone, especially in the forest like I do.
Is someone there? Has an animal gotten in? Did the skylight crack? This is when it would be nice to have someone you could ask, “Did you hear that?”
This happens a lot, and not just to me. I see you out there with your eyes wide open in the dark.
Most of the time, it’s nothing to worry about. If you have a dog, it will jump up and bark if a live being does get into the house. A dog’s hearing is way better than ours. But when it’s just you, it’s easy to get paranoid.
Buildings creak and groan as they age and adapt to changes in temperature and humidity. Faucets drip. The heater cycles on and off. The refrigerator hums. (When it’s making ice, mine sounds like it’s throwing rocks.) Rain patters on the roof, and wind-blown branches swish against the walls. Small animals may run across the deck or through the attic.
In a city, cars, trains, airplanes, sirens, music, and passing voices add to the night noises. The world goes on, no matter what time it is. We might not notice these sounds during the day, but at night, when it’s quiet, they keep us awake.
A Google search brings up alarming posts about people having auditory hallucinations. That’s not what I was looking for, but sometimes when I don’t have my hearing aids in, I think I hear noises that probably aren’t there. My father, nearly deaf in his later years, insisted that he heard people pounding on his door and calling his name during the night. When I was there, all I heard were the squirrels running along the fence, but he was sure people were trying to break into the house.
We’re used to lots of noise when we’re awake, and then we turn everything off . . . and have trouble going to sleep.
Some of my best sleep happens when I doze off while watching TV. I can’t tell you how often I have to go back and replay the shows I missed. But when I’m lying in my bed in the dark, it’s not so easy to sleep.
Some people have trouble sleeping by themselves, and not just because they hear things. Having someone close by is said to have all kinds of medical and psychological benefits. Me, I have always slept better on my own. Even my dog was exiled to her own bed. I’m restless, I snore, and I like a lot of space. If I wake up with an idea in the middle of the night, I want to be able to write it down.
But when I hear sounds in the night, I’d kind of like someone else within shouting distance. Maybe it harks back to when I was a child sleeping alone in my bedroom, comforted by the fact that my brother and Mom and Dad were just down the hall. I didn’t worry about noises because I knew they would take care of anything that went wrong. Now, if the house is falling down, I have to save myself.
When I can’t sleep, I often turn on the radio or play music on my phone. Some people keep the television on all night. Others use “white noise” machines playing ocean sounds, bird calls, or just a roar. Since we’re sleeping alone, we’re not bothering anyone if we break the silence with noises that comfort us instead of noises that scare us.
How about you? Do you worry about things you hear at night? Do you sleep with some kind of sound turned on? Is it easier for you to sleep with another person or alone? What do you do when you just can’t fall asleep?
Further Reading
Can't Sleep Alone? Learn How to Rest Better Solo - Sleep Advisor
Stop Being Scared of Noises at Night - Behavioral Health Direct
Photo by M on Unsplash
How did I end up alone? My first marriage ended in divorce. My second husband died of Alzheimer’s after we had moved to the Oregon coast, far from family. I never had any kids, only dogs. Now I live by myself in a big house in the woods. You can read our story in my new memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available now at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.
Beginning my second year without my wife, and first year with my son at his dorm in college, I have found the night can be uniquely terrifying.
Also, I could easily live my life on a complete night shift / reversed schedule, so once I'm up past a certain hour it feels natural for me to stay up all night and I often feel more creative and productive at night.
Some nights seems normal, but often enough the night feels sort of electric, spooky, weird. I know a lot of this is me processing my experiences of the last five years of my wife's illness, and then afterwards. I thought things would kind of normalize in this regard, but they still vacillate between normal night/weird night which is not particularly conducive to any kind of productive daytime activity, unfortunately.
I do deep breathing and autogenic suggestions for relaxation and pain relief.