Ballroom

Sleep has always been capricious. Deep sleep more careless still.

In elementary school I would go to bed and lay there half the night thinking the things elementary school kids think about. At least that’s what I thought. It was years before I found out that the inside of my head was different compared to those I knew. I would run back conversations I’d had over the course of the day, imagine what I should have said instead of what I’d actually said. I had a great imagination and I would create stories that would turn into sagas in the space of one night. I would think about my parents fighting; it was, unfortunately, that type of home. I would go over all of the mean things they said to each other and I became a good strategist by observing how they pushed one another’s buttons. I would find myself thinking about all of these things so pointedly that I gave myself headaches from frowning so many hours. The headaches then made it harder still to fall asleep.

So sleep was difficult. However, for a few years, actually falling asleep was downright weird.

Sometimes something interesting would happen just as I lost consciousness. I heard voices. Low murmuring voices, some near, some far, some laughing, never intrusive, never intelligible, but in multitude. This happened with enough frequency that I eventually recognized it as my precursor to sleep. I remember thinking that perhaps this was just something my brain was doing, random brain activity in response to the winding down of brainwave patterns. Or, I thought, perhaps these noises had always been, had always been there, and that I was only now noticing them, just as my brain was transitioning, when all else had fallen silent.

This went on for years.

Then one night, as I was dozing off, I heard the voices again. This time there seemed to also be music. I say “seemed” because I was falling asleep. My thinking was slowed. Where I usually heard voices whose words I couldn’t make out, I could now hear music but I couldn’t identify the melodies. I had the distinct feeling that I was in a large space, like a gymnasium. After some months the thought crossed my mind that it may be a ballroom. Was that true, or did I know just think that because the thought had come? The sounds of voices and music behaved like those enclosed in a large hall, echoing and mingling, so the notion of a ballroom made sense.

And now there was the lovely laughter of a woman nearby. I’ve always loved the sound of a woman’s laugh. I have fallen in love many times to that sound; I wonder if this is where I noticed it first? And as I admired the sound I felt a hand, her hand, on my shoulder and a gentle shaking. Whoever this person was she was trying to wake me. I was being invited, welcomed, included, wanted.

I always woke up at this point. And I could always still hear the sound of the voices and the music. And for years I could still feel her hand on my shoulder, gently trying to wake me.

There are any number of possible reasons why this was a part of my experience growing up. The most likely is the desynchronization of brain states, meaning that my brain would approach REM sleep faster than my body was ready for it. This would result in the misrepresentation of minor sensory input. Maybe something brushed against my cheek or there were sounds nearby or I smelled something wafting through my window, etc., and my brain did its best to explain it by assigning meaning to it. Perhaps the ballroom was just the result of hearing music playing somewhere in the neighborhood. Los Angeles is a giant city and people are up all hours of the day and night. Perhaps the voices I heard came from there, too. But the hand that I felt on my shoulder? I don’t know.

Insomnia is another possible reason. My anxiety during elementary school did cause sleep deprivation. Sleep paralysis, another version of desynchronization of brain states, was par for the course and continues to be so. Any of these reasons could have contributed to the experience of the ballroom. I know this. I understand it ostensibly.

The ballroom transition hasn’t happened in a long time now, decades. But I still remember the young version of myself wondering, what would happen if one of these days I actually woke up there? Would I open my eyes there and not here? Would it be a beautifully grand and spacious area? Would there be an orchestra and elegantly dressed people dancing, talking, enjoying themselves and one another? And would she be there, laughing and smiling at me, glad to see me finally open my eyes?

(1.8.2026-6.27.2026)

MEMORIES, real or otherwise