ChristyBassman.com

I sleepwalk. This is true. I have woken up standing in my hallway. I have woken up standing in the dining room, frantically rifling through my purse. I have woken up in the kitchen holding a glass of water. Once, I found myself at the dining room window, grasping the blinds, looking outside, because an earthquake had just shaken the apartment. I didn't discover that I sleepwalk until I was about 27 years old.

It also happens that I grind my teeth in my sleep. I didn't know this either, until I reached the age of 29. Upon notifying my mother of this, she said, ponderingly, “Yeah … you used to grind your teeth when you were little, too.”

Thanks. Did it not occur to you to tell me about this? Did thirty years really have to pass before I discovered these things about myself on my own? She didn't know about the sleepwalking though. Keith only caught me a few times when we were together. I have a vague memory of being sixteen or seventeen years old, and waking up to find myself already up, but it didn't occur to me what had actually happened.

I wonder what else I don't know about myself yet. What I'm trying to get at, here, the conclusion I am arriving at emotionally but not quite verbally, is that I'm Mary's granddaughter, and I am like her, but my life would be unfathomable to her, just as hers is nearly unfathomable to me.

Meanwhile everybody else is busy assigning their version and vision of me and being very confident about it. “Oh, you like those military type buff guys.” “You've got a thing for those shaggy-haired musician types.” “You like tall guys.” “You like blue-collar guys.” People, please. Men do not come in cookie cutter shapes and sizes. I am not chasing after a form factor. I have to disappoint you. Please quit trying to predict who or what I want. Believe me, you don't know, so quit trying. There is apparently nothing more mysterious or confounding than a celibate woman of childbearing age. People are desperate to match you to somebody they believe you should be idealizing, and they tend to get very angry when you don't find this appealing.

“She's that friendly helpful girl!” “She's that quiet smart woman.” “She's the funny one.” “She's pretty humorless.” “She's the sarcastic one.” “She seems sort of standoffish.” “The first thing that struck me about you was how friendly you were.” “You're crazy.” “You're one of the most levelheaded people I know.” Is it any wonder I have issues with identity? Once I pinpointed this, it took me months to get to where I could set appropriate borders and stop letting other people define me, or at least to stop letting it upset or confuse me.

Yeah. Let me tell you about my day.

People who drink Diet Pepsi have no morals. That's the long and the short of it. They have no morals, and they will steal candy from babies and listen to Britney Spears and drive Fords. They will download illegal copies of movies off the Internet and live with their mother until they're 40, while smoking crack and driving with no seatbelt on with a family of illegal aliens in the trunk of their Ford. They will plant a bug in your cubicle at work and post mp3s of your most embarrassing gossip all over Limewire.

Yes, people who drink Diet Pepsi are evil, and must be done away with.

I have insomnia.