So I Had A Hallucination

Hallucinations: Does anyone know much about these?

I'm pretty sure I had a severe hallucination yesterday; my first in fact. My friends will argue that this was at least my second ever since I saw a little boy disappear out of thin air at an Arby's 2 summers ago and then reappear in the parking lot just seconds later. But that one, I'm sure, was not a hallucination but rather a realistic manifestation of evil in human form. I know what I saw and one day I'll be getting a lot of apologies. We'll talk about that one another time.

What happened yesterday, I'm sure, was a COMPLETE hallucination and I'm sure this has never happened to me before. I'm not a great sleeper; I never have been. It usually takes me an hour or two to fall asleep each night and I need absolute silence in order to do so. I have one friend who lives in Toronto who used to tell me in a thick old man Toronto accent that that was a sign of a guilty conscience. Maybe. But lately it's been worse and I've been suffering the results of being sleep-deprived in my classes each day where every time I hear someone say "hello" I think they're saying "pillow." So yesterday I decided to come home in the afternoon for a bit and attempt a nap.

Napping is a pretty foreign concept for me. I can hardly sleep at night; why would I try to sleep during the day? But I heard a while ago that every hour of sleep you lose and fail to make up takes off a decade of your life and makes you 30% more likely to contract leprosy and while my skin is already halfway there during the winter, I would really like to avoid that one.

So I napped. And it sort of worked. Until the hallucination happened: I woke up after about 30 minutes and looked toward the door in my room. As vividly as I've ever seen anything, I saw it coming toward me. It was a GIANT black spider with looooooooong spindly legs all moving up and down. It was gliding about a foot below the ceiling toward the bed. Now you're thinking, "well that's not so crazy. Maybe it wasn't a hallucination." The spider was about the size of a giant beach ball. Still smiling?

So I FLEW out of bed, put my hands over my head and ran to the door screaming, bent over the whole way. I flipped the light on and looked in the direction the alleged spider was heading, my heart pounding faster than I think it's ever pounded before. I've really never been afraid of spiders before but what I had just seen was making me reconsider the whole thing. I looked around for about 2 minutes before I finally started to reason through the situation. I then had the following conversation with myself, aloud:

Eli: Where did it go?
Eli: You know it probably wasn't real. I don't think spiders can be that big.
Eli: I know what I saw. I didn't make that up!
Eli: I'm kind of hungry right now. Do I have any string cheese?
Eli: Don't change the subject. Where did that spider go?
Eli: Oh, it was probably just a hallucination.
Eli: No, don't say that. Then that means I might be going crazy.
Eli: Well I am talking to myself.
Eli: Good point.
Eli: Thanks
Eli: Oh and I don't have string cheese, just a block of something.
Eli: What's the difference between block cheese and string cheese?
Eli: One is stringy.
Eli: Thanks, I know that. But why is it stringy?
Eli: I don't know. I've never thought about it before.
Eli: Do you think you can die from eating too much cheese?
Eli: You can die from eating too much of anything.
Eli: That's true. I bet I'll die from eating too much popcorn.
Eli: Yeah or something stupid like candy corn.
Eli: True. Because when there's a big bowl full of it I can never stop eating it.
Eli: I would like to die from eating too much cheesecake.
Eli: Yeah, then on my tombstone they could write "Rest in Pieces."
Eli: Hahahahaha. I get it! Like pieces of pie.
Eli: Yeah; then below that they could say "sorry for the 'cheesy' comment above."
Eli: hmmm. . .ok.
Eli: OK, I think I'm going to finish my nap and then go find some cheese.
Eli: What about the spider?!
Eli: Didn't we establish there isn't one.
Eli: Oh. Right.

I'm not sure if I should be more concerned about the hallucination or the full-blown conversation I had with myself about the hallucination in which I took sides and argued vehemently for both ways. Or maybe I should be concerned that in my moment of great alarm I couldn't even carry on a conversation with myself about a giant spider that posed a serious and imminent threat without getting side-tracked and start talking about cheese. Either way, It Just Gets Stranger~