Why you shouldn't hang a wind chime over your bed

I can pinpoint the moment this all started to the day I was 10 years old and got the wind chime that still hangs over my bed.<br><br>I was on a car ride with my father to the boardwalk. I think we were on summer vacation that week and this was how he was deciding to spend quality time with me. It was a pretty standard father/daughter relationship. We were never close, and he never really spent any time with me unless mom dragged him into it. So I have no idea why he made the effort to take me to the boardwalk that day.<br><br>I remember we stopped at a souvenir shop after we ate some bad seafood. My dad was seeing this very nice looking woman at work, and the way my mom started speaking to me indicated they had split up. I think my father was taking me out to get my mind off of it.<br><br>As we walked through the souvenir shop, I saw this beautiful wind chime that was for sale. It was a very simple wind chime, I remember that much. It was made up of a few pieces of very thin metal that were shaped like leaves. There were also a few small bells in the middle of the chime that dinged as the leaves vibrated and moved in the wind. I don't see why, but it had just captivated me. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I asked my dad if I could buy it, and he happily said yes, he even let me hang it over my bed when we got home.<br><br>That's why what's happening to me right now is all my fault. If I had never bought that stupid wind chime, I would still be able to sleep at night.<br><br>I don't know how long this has gone on for. Days? Weeks? Months? I've lost count at this point. It's been a while, and I'm still trying to figure out how to stop it from happening.<br><br>I'm basically unable to sleep. Anytime I fall asleep and even the slightest bit of breeze hits the wind chime, I will immediately wake up. I'm sure this is because of some sort of survival mechanism my brain has kicked into. If I had been able to sleep through what was happening, who knows how long I would have survived.<br><br>I think my brain was trying to tell me something for a while before I figured it out. The first night it happened, I had a dream that my mother was standing above me, looking down and smiling, except her smile was backwards. She was also making this noise, that sounded like a cross between a hiss and a moan. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. When I woke up, I dismissed it as a dream. Then, the next night, I had the same dream. My mom standing above me, smiling with that terrifying moan/hiss noise. This went on for a few more nights, and I was really getting confused. I have never had the same recurring dream in such short succession like this. Then, I figured it out. It wasn't a dream, it was what was happening in real life. Every night, my mother was creeping into my room, standing above me, and smiling at me with her backwards smile. I woke up to see her doing it one night, and I couldn't go to sleep ever again.<br><br>I've tried a few different solutions. First, I simply took the wind chime down. Problem solved, right? I thought so too, until I heard my mother's smile creeping into my room and I looked to see her inches from my face. I don't know how she knew I was awake, because I blocked out the rest of the memory, but I do remember it wasn't pretty. I still have two giant bandages on my face since it happened. The next night, the wind chime was back, and when the window opened, I knew I had to come up with a better solution.<br><br>So I started sleeping with earplugs in. I assumed that if I couldn't hear the wind chime, my survival mechanism wouldn't go off. Well, it did. My mother ended up making a lot of noise the night I tried that, and I still woke up to her two smiling faces looking into mine.<br><br>My last resort was sleeping with headphones on and a white noise app blaring in my ears. I have never been able to sleep with anything covering my ears, so I was shocked when I was actually able to fall asleep. That's probably why I was so careless that night, and why I'm writing this right now. My mom came into my room while I was asleep, and gently lifted my headphones off of my ears. I didn't wake up until her cold hand reached into my mouth and pulled out my earplugs.<br><br>I'm not going to go into detail about what happened after that, but it wasn't good. After the first few bites of pain, I think I passed out from the pain. When I came to, I was still in my room, with my headphones back on my ears and my earplugs back in. Apparently my mom put them back for me. I looked at the clock and saw that almost 12 hours had passed since I went to sleep. I have been up ever since, and I don't plan on sleeping anytime soon. I'm not gonna die because of my lack of sleep, and I'm not going to end up like my mom. I'm going to figure out a way to stop her, or I'm going to run away from her. The way it is now can't go on any longer.<br><br>I'm going to end this post here because I'm hearing the wind start to pick up. I have to go. Wish me luck.