I had to get in touch with one of my exes. Any ex would do, really, though I’d decided it would have to be a more recent one.
He’d be able to tell me if I’d ever sleep-walked when we were together.
Perhaps I needed to get in touch with quite a few people I’d shared a bed with, to get a bit of time depth. See if I could pinpoint when the odd activity began.
The first time I knew anything about my sleepwalking was when I got a new WalkBandTM. The irony, you might be thinking, is that I only bought it because I was on a health binge after the last break-up. I was going to look amazing, lose weight, take my mind off my personal situation. I was going to sleep better, by tracking my nighttime hours. I was basically going to be fabulously attractive to potential mates!
The WalkBandTM has a GPS chip in it to measure my running and walking, count my steps and all that. Tells me when I hit my daily targets. It also tells me when to go to bed, and when to wake up. It tells me when I should get out for a stretch and some fresh air, and for how long. It’s basically my mum.
It took me a little while to hit my stride, but before long I was pretty pleased, if a little surprised, to find I was hitting my step goals day after day. I usually managed a good walk each day, but looking back over my history I’d topped 20,000 steps every day for a month! The GPS track itself shocked me most: I’d been going out at night, just enough to top up my step count and reach those targets. That explained why the less effort I put in of a day, the more knackered I felt the next.
Other people with the same gadget got the same results. And that last ex of mine confirmed – I’d never once sleep-walked before we broke up.