Before I Go to Sleep

“The face I see looking back at me is not my own. The hair has no volume and is cut much shorter than I wear it, the skin on the cheeks and under the chin sags; the lips are thin, the mouth turned down. I cry out, a wordless gasp that would turn into a shriek of shock were I to let it, and then notice the eyes. The skin around them is lined, yes, but despite everything else, I can see that they are mine. The person in the mirror is me, but I am twenty years too old. Twenty-five. More.”

Christine describes her shock as she wakes believing she is in her twenties and is confronted with the reflection of a middle-aged woman. The critical language Christine uses to describe her sagging chin, thin lips, and lined skin expresses her struggle to accept the ravages of time. While aging is a natural part of the human condition, Christine feels it has happened to her overnight.

“I am an adult, but a damaged one. It would be easy for this man to take me somewhere, though I don’t know what he would want to do. I am as vulnerable as a child.”

The man Christine describes here is Dr. Nash, but this statement could equally apply to the man who is pretending to be Christine’s husband. Christine’s amnesia makes her an easy target for others to exploit. With no memories to refer to, she is forced to trust that people are who they purport to be.

“Something has been added. Something unexpected, terrifying. More terrifying than anything else I have seen today. There, beneath my name, in blue ink and capital letters, are three words. DON’T TRUST BEN.”

Christine describes opening her journal and seeing the note she has written about her husband. The words immediately create an atmosphere of foreboding and distrust. Christine cannot be sure whether this note is accurate or results from a spate of paranoia and wavers between doubting and believing it. Ironically, when she finally crosses out the words, she discovers that the warning to herself was well-founded.

“It sounded messy, a ring caked in soap, and fraught with the possibility that I might not have used the bar, or found the ring, for weeks. But still, it was not an unromantic story.”

This is Christine’s reaction when Mike (posing as Ben) tells her about his marriage proposal. While she acknowledges the story is romantic, she struggles to picture the event, as it sounds both impractical and “messy.” Christine instinctively doubts the emotional truth of the anecdote as Mike has invented it.

“That can’t describe my whole life. That can’t be all I amounted to. A wedding, a honeymoon, a marriage. But what else was I expecting?”

When Christine asks Mike about her past, he responds with a version that focuses on their romance. He edits out the parts of Christine’s life that meant the most to her: being Adam’s mother and becoming a successful author. By doing so, Mike makes her life appear small and disappointing, adding to Christine’s sense of purposelessness.

“To me he was a stranger; though intellectually I knew we got into bed together every night, had done so since we were married, still my body had known him for less than a day.”

Throughout the novel, Christine feels an aversion to getting into bed with the man she believes is her husband. Here, Christine rationalizes her feelings, explaining that it is difficult to experience intimacy with someone she has no memory of. While this is a valid point, Christine’s physical aversion to Mike/Ben expresses her deeply repressed knowledge that he is an imposter.

“It was as if my past suddenly felt dangerous. A place it might be unwise to visit.”

When Dr. Nash suggests visiting Christine’s old home to trigger memories, Christine is uncertain. Her fear that the past may be a dangerous place foreshadows the unpleasant truths Christine will discover in her quest for memory. Nevertheless, she goes ahead, prepared to face trauma if it leads to truth.

“I know the truth. My own truth, one I have not been told but have remembered. And it is written now, etched in the journal rather than my memory, but permanent nevertheless. I know that the book I am writing—my second, I realize with pride—may be dangerous, as well as necessary. It is not fiction. It may reveal things best left undiscovered. Secrets that ought not to see the light of day. But still my pen moves across the page.”

Christine expresses the importance of her journal—a recurring motif in the novel. The journal plays a vital role in the protagonist’s quest for identity as it becomes her substitute for memory. Her journal entries crucially provide Christine with her own version of “the truth” instead of relying on other people’s narratives who may not have her best interests at heart.

“When I tried to organize my memories they fluttered and vanished, like a feather caught on the wind that changes direction whenever a hand snatches at it.”

Christine unsuccessfully tries to turn her fleeting memories of her son into a coherent whole. The figurative language in this passage captures the elusive quality of her memory by comparing it to a feather that floats on the breeze, always tantalizingly out of reach.

“Domesticity has so many dangers for someone without a memory.”

Christine’s statement refers to the fire that Mike claims destroyed many of their photographs. Christine blames herself for the fictional fire, assuming her amnesia caused her to leave something burning on the stove. Watson employs irony here, as Christine does not realize that the greatest danger in her domestic environment is the man who claims to be her caring husband.

“I carry these jagged shards of memory with me always, everywhere, like tiny bombs, and at any moment one might pierce the surface and force me to go through the pain as if for the first time, taking him with me.”

Although Christine is desperate to retrieve her memories, some of them cause her pain. The narrator often uses the semantic field of warfare to describe the distress memories cause her, comparing them to bombs or explosives igniting in her head. This figurative use of language suggests Christine sees her quest for identity as a battle.

“I felt sure that there must be a key, a memory that would unlock all the others.”

Christine is plagued by the certainty that one crucial memory holds the “key” to remembering everything else. As is often the case, her instinct is correct. Once Christine remembers that it was Mike who attacked her, the rest of her memories come streaming back. The return of her memories suggests that emotional trauma contributed to Christine’s amnesia.

“Another day was ending. Soon I will sleep, and my brain will begin to delete everything. Tomorrow I will go through it all again.”

Christine emphasizes sleep’s debilitating role in her life (also highlighted in the novel’s title). Sleep is a chance to rest and recuperate for most people, but for Christine, it represents a kind of death, erasing her memories and sense of identity.

“My life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of recollection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?”

This passage highlights one of the novel’s themes: the link between memory and identity. Christine mourns that half of her life has passed and, as she cannot remember any of it, it is as if she never existed. By using metaphors associated with riches, the protagonist conveys the priceless value of accumulated memories.

“I must not sleep. I must not sleep. I. Must. Not. Sleep.”

Christine has a flashback to her thoughts while being strangled in the first attack. The protagonist’s fear of sleep takes on new significance as she fights to stay conscious, knowing she will die if she fails.

“I feel like I am going mad. Everything is fluid, everything shifts. I think one thing and then, a moment later, the opposite. I believe everything my husband says, and then I believe nothing. I trust him, and then I don’t. Nothing feels real, everything invented. Even myself.”

The protagonist’s continually shifting sense of reality is expressed in this journal entry. Christine feels that her wavering perception of Ben is based on paranoia caused by her amnesia. However, her fears about her husband and the truth of what he tells her are well-founded.

“Christine, we’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.”

This speech by Dr. Nash highlights the novel’s theme of memory and confabulation. Dr. Nash points out that it is not just patients with amnesia who tend to invent memories and then believe that they are true. The entire memory retrieval process involves subtly changing events until they fit our perception of the truth.

“Despite the nebulous, shimmering memory I have of him, I feel love for Adam, an instinct to protect him, the desire to give him everything, the feeling that he is part of me and without him I am incomplete.”

Christine is constantly frustrated by her inability to retrieve clear memories of Adam. However, her strong sense of love and yearning for him is ever-present. Christine’s instinctive maternal love for her son contrasts with her lack of emotional response to Mike. Although she tells herself she should love him, she cannot feel it in her heart.

“I could not have known, back then, that I was packing for the man who would take everything from me. I carry on packing for the man I still have.”

Watson uses heavy irony here as Christine packs for her weekend away and remembers packing for Brighton 20 years earlier. Christine thinks of the man who attacked her and the man she lives with as two different people. She has no idea that the circumstances of her first attack are about to be re-enacted.

“But even as I marvel at it I know it is not real. I know I am not remembering the thing that happened, I am remembering the image I formed in my mind this afternoon as I read about the thing, and even that was a recollection of an earlier memory. Memories of memories.”

Christine has a flashback of Adam on a tricycle, only to realize that she is not remembering the event itself but a previous memory of it. This passage again emphasizes the idea that memories are not accurate representations of past events but modified versions of them that are sometimes even fictional.

“My mind stops spinning, and although I remain terrified, I am infused with a bizarre sense of complete calm. A thought comes from nowhere. I will beat him. I will get away. I have to.”

As she realizes she is trapped in the hotel room, Christine’s inner voice tells her that she will get the better of Mike. Her calm under pressure demonstrates the growing strength and independence of her character.

“Where do you think you’re going to run to? You can’t drive. You don’t know anybody. You don’t even know who you are most of the time. You have nowhere to go, nowhere at all. You’re pathetic.”

This speech demonstrates the way Mike uses coercive control to maintain his power over Christine. He reminds her that she is socially isolated and entirely dependent on him, a situation he has deliberately engineered. In doing so, he hopes to crush Christine’s spirit and return her to her vulnerable state.

“And now I am here again, in this room. We have turned full circle, though for me all the days between have been stolen. It is as though I never left.”

This passage emphasizes the novel’s circular structure. Christine’s narrative has returned to November 30, the date the story started. At the same time, Christine feels as if she has returned to the day, two decades earlier, when she lost her memory in the attack. This structure suggests that Christine must confront her original trauma for her life to move on.