It always starts the same way

The inky black veil of sleep is heavy over me as I am vividly engaged in a dream turned nightmare. It starts innocently enough. I’m at work, the day unfolds the way all my days do, lulling me into false security and when my subconscious conjures and unleashes this latest terror on me I am blindsided.

Suddenly my place of employment has gone dark and an icy cold that washes over me is as real as what I feel in my physical body when I am awake. Then without warning I’m aware that I’m no longer alone in the reconstructed dark version of my job that my mind has pieces together. I sense the frenzied, fast approach of some unknown yet undeniably hostile force upon me. I abandon all sense of normalcy and run headlong into the nightmare. I am outside now and the walls of my workplace have evaporated and fallen away as I sprint between shifting trees, debris and buildings, to nowhere in particular. I hear myself crying, audibly alternating between petrified shrieks of fear and wild and hysterical fits of laughter and my chest is tight and my limbs heavy as I try to force myself to evade the unknown lurking evil that I somehow innately know is close by.  

The dread is palpable and I have the distinct feeling that if whatever is after me were to catch up I would be dead. 

Suddenly I am lost and I feel myself giving way to the helpless feeling of doom as my limbs begin to slow, somehow burdened with invisible weights that move me into a slow motion crawl to no destination. The terror eclipses me and I want to scream but I can’t muster breath or sound or movement.

Suddenly my mind becomes aware that I am dreaming and in what is the world’s least amusing joke, I begin the worst part of this episode which is the waking up.

My consciousness is the first domino to fall in the process as I slowly realize I am leaving a nightmare because it has reached it’s terror climax and my brain cannot take anymore. So kind of my mind to push me to the absolute limit before allowing me to wake from my own self made horror experience. As my mind makes it’s way out of the heavy sleep realm I try desperately to open my eyes and reconnect with reality but the suffocating weight and shivering cold of sleep paralysis has me glued motionless on my back in my bed. I try to summon the strength to move, directing all my energy into the tips of my fingers trying to force a single twitch or flex, something to regain control of my earthly body as my spirit wakes up in it. I remain paralyzed, my heart racing, unable to take in a single breath, each second feeling longer than the next. I am simultaneously desperate to be awake and trying to regain control of my body is like fumbling and dropping the keys to your front door when you’re urgently pressed to get in. Finally my eyelids flutter open while the rest of my body remains locked and immobile.

My eyes dart left and right furiously trying to ground and connect to anything in the real world and my throat feels dry like a scream and gasp for air is trapped inside unable to escape. I feel the cold, and the sickening feeling of being watched. 

This is always the worst part of sleep paralysis for me, the undeniable sensation that whatever evil came to chase me down in my sleep is now pressing through trying to make it’s way into the physical realm. Suddenly all at once the weight lifts off my body and I’m free. I choke and gasp for air and jerk upright in bed in a panic, adrenaline pouring through my veins and every nerve in my body shrieking like I’ve been electrocuted. My head is pounding with a migraine and I’m shaking and cold from head to toe. 

The fear I feel is debilitating I snatch at my phone dropping it several times as I try to make my intermittently numb and nervous hands unlock and access my contacts. My mind is racing trying to think of a name of someone to call, desperate to hear a live voice to help bring me back to reality. I am flooded with shame and self consciousness at my fear, as real and as vulnerable as when I was a kid, running into my parents bedroom after a childhood nightmare. I yearn for a comforting voice as I fumble with my phone in the dark, too afraid to look around the unlit bedroom as my eyes are still conjuring terrifying images from my imagination and inserting them into reality making it nearly impossible to be sure of what’s real. Fear has eliminated my ability to dismiss the irrational.

Slowly it dawns on me that it is the dead of night and all my friends and family are fast asleep and have work and early mornings tomorrow. I steel myself and force my shaking hands not to dial any numbers. For a flighting moment I miss my toxic relationship with my former husband because he had rare moments of compassion when this would happen and would urgently shake me awake and hold me close to his chest stroking my hair and murmuring “you’re okay, you’re okay, it’s not real” as I violently sobbed and incoherently relayed bits and pieces of what I had just witnessed in my psyche to him. I think that was the most he ever loved me. In the dead of night when I was transformed into a helpless, night terror plagued child, exiting my subconscious in a total panic. He would be waiting each time on the other side to hold me through the shaky, jolting aftermath and assure me I was back to the safety of real world. I will always be grateful for those moments.

But that relationship is long gone now, died out from a myriad of larger, more serious problems and I am so terribly alone. So I drag my heavy, still sore and shaky limbs from bed and wander into the kitchen flipping on every light and rummage through my cabinets looking for some candy to help raise my blood sugar and stop the shakes. 

If you suffer from night terrors and sleep paralysis, try it. It really helps.

And finally after dropping a handful of items I clumsily knocked off the counter in my search I go back to bed with my head throbbing and sit upright.

I resign myself to writing down this experience with all the lights on because my therapist advised me too write when I wake up in the night like this. She warmly assured me that everything happens for a reason and if I find myself wide awake at 3 am, it could be because something important is trying to find it’s what out.

I shudder involuntary in disgust as I recall the dark and sinister presence that moments ago seemed to silently shriek over me, crushing me into my bed. Is that what is trying to get out? Out of where? My own mind? 

I obediently write the experience down, being as descriptive as I can. I watch the clock strike 3 am as I conclude my prose. 

There. It’s out. 

“Better on this page than inside me.” I think. I open my notes app and mark down the date. “It’s been zero days without incident.” I joke to myself darkly. 

But a part of me is grieved as I record it. There has never really been a day without incident.