1 post tagged “sleep paralysis”
What's the most recent vivid dream or nightmare that you remember?
All of my dreams/nightmares are vivid. Dreaming is one of my hobbies.
Hence the name dreamattack (yes yes in addition to the wonderful and
amazing song). I think I'll cheat for this one and recycle some past
dream writing...
July 07th 2003
“All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.”
~~ Elias Canetti The Human Province
I love to sleep. I love to dream. I can sleep anywhere, anytime, as long as I’m not being distracted by other things (which happens all too frequently.) As I child, I was the strange kid on the bus who could fall asleep with her head banging painfully against the window glass. For decades, now (ha!) I have recorded my dreams, wandered them agape with joy and delight. Explored the meaning and myth, dabbled with lucidity, and met some of my favorite souls inside my head. For a time, I believe I was addicted to dreaming. I had convinced myself that I was stepping into an alternate reality when I closed my eyes at night. My dreams were so … episodic, consistent. But they eventually veered away from that world and entered another, and another … ad infinitum.
The other night something strange and terrifying happened. I got stuck somewhere between here and there. The shuttering landscape that is the reel-to-reel reality of dreams invaded my conscious mind, or was it the other way around?
The void - the emptiness that you flash through like lightning in a hurry, the transition between the last driplets of consciousness - the here and then the there. One has no conscious awareness of the shift. But this was something entirely different. And it awoke a memory within me of similar episodes past.
In bed. On my side, the right one. Pillow between my knees, bear between arms, kitty Ivan, the sucker of breath, mere millimeters from my head, par for the course, mama’s boy. Coast-to-coast murmuring in my right ear, B’s familiar sleepful grinding, smacking & mumbling in the left. This is falling asleep. I am falling asleep. Falling, blank blank blank blank…
Then awareness: I am awake (I am asleep) or am I? Zipped up tight in the belly of a snake? Nothing moves, I can’t move I open my mouth, I cannot open my mouth. I cannot open my eyes, but I see the gray and halo through the lids. I’m asleep?
Something is there. Someone is coming. The presence is far from benign, it moves closer, no it glides. I am both above and within. Blind and watching. My heart pounds, it glides closer, something is coming for me, for my soul, to tear me open and swallow my soul. I struggle, I scream, I cannot move I cannot scream. I feel pressure on all sides, something restrains me, the terror rises and begins to cycle around me.
I struggle against the restraining, I can feel nothing, hear nothing see nothing. Paralysed. Move nothing. I purse my mind, flexing like physical strength, willing willing willing something to move, my voice to open and break the spell. My arms, move them, MOVE THEM, fling them round wildly and strike out at the presence. Scream, scream, screaming screaming, my arms move, my eyes open, B’s hand on my shoulder, Wake up! You’re having a bad dream!
But it wasn’t a dream - it was something else. I was trapped and in danger. I was mute and terrified. I couldn’t breathe. It was real, it felt so real. My mind playing tricks? My body ached from the struggle.
I was afraid. Afraid to fall asleep again. I tried to explain, describe to him what had happened, but he was asleep again [I envy the ease with which the bed embraces him.] Well I wasn’t going to go back to sleep again. No matter … oh fuck, it’s happening again. The same struggle, the same feeling of mummification, surrounded and compressed on all sides. Constricted. In danger, oh fuck in danger. It resumed its slow advance on my imobilized body. I immediately resume willing every muscle in my body to react, to open and swing. I break the surface screaming. B. catches me as I fall. You’re having a bad dream again!
No you don't understand - I was paralyzed, every atom of my body was paralyzed, but I was there, consciously and subconsciously, above and within. The words didn’t escape my mouth quite this eloquently - he couldn’t understand my slurred tongue as I tried to make him see.
I couldn’t have remained above the surface long, I dipped and surfaced several more times. Each time paralyzed by unknown forces, mute by unknown means. At some undetectable point, I slipped all the way down the tunnel into the canyon of my dreamworld. I curled up in the ether and spent the night.
The next morning, awake - and contemplative - the phenomenon makes sense. My brain was simply hanging inbetween states, while my body had already initiated the muscular shutdown it must achieve in order to keep us safe while sleeping. I was aware of the paralysis, without the means to understand that it was simply a biological process. In retrospect, it was a fascinating thing, and I hope I won’t react so violently in the future. Sleep Paralysis is a recognized sleep disorder. Now I have four sleep disorder notches on my bedpost.
