Diana The Sexomniact

Diana, a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, has built her life around long hours, difficult clients, and the constant pressure to succeed. She is known at the firm for being prepared, composed, and nearly impossible to rattle. Her colleagues trust her with demanding cases, her clients rely on her judgment, and her friends have grown accustomed to her cancelling plans whenever work becomes too busy. Diana tells herself that the exhaustion is temporary and that success requires sacrifice.

Lately, however, something has begun to disturb the careful structure of her life. She has started waking with no memory of things she apparently did during the night. At first, the incidents are small enough to dismiss: a glass left in another room, her phone found beneath the bed, a message sent at an hour when she knows she was asleep. Then the gaps become more troubling. She discovers unfamiliar clothing on the floor, receives confused questions from people she barely remembers speaking to, and begins to wonder whether she is doing things in her sleep that she would never choose to do while awake.

Disturbed and embarrassed, Diana visits her local neurologist, Dr Wong. She approaches the appointment with the same controlled professionalism she brings to court, carefully describing each incident while avoiding the details that make her most uncomfortable. Dr Wong asks about her stress levels, sleeping habits, medication, alcohol consumption, and recent changes in her personal life. He listens without judgment, but his questions make Diana increasingly aware of how little she understands about her own nights.

After discussing her symptoms, Dr Wong suspects that she may have developed sexsomnia, a rare sleep disorder in which a person can initiate sexual behaviour while still asleep and remember little or nothing afterward. He explains that the condition can be associated with stress, exhaustion, disrupted sleep, and other underlying problems. A diagnosis may provide an explanation, but it does not immediately answer the questions that frighten Diana most: what exactly has she been doing, who has witnessed it, and whether anyone has taken advantage of her vulnerability.

For a woman whose career depends on remaining controlled, rational, and prepared, the diagnosis is terrifying. Diana has spent years building a reputation based on discipline, yet she can no longer trust the hours when she is unconscious. She must now determine what happens after she falls asleep, whether anyone else knows about her condition, and how much of her carefully ordered life is beginning to slip beyond her control.