dat demon

Sleep paralysis is possibly the worst thing ever.  It's a state somewhere between sleeping and waking, where half of your brain is awake and the other half is asleep.  It's fairly common, with about 6% of the population experiencing some form of sleep paralysis at some time in their life.  It's a well-documented and scientifically studied neuropathological condition, with the majority of sufferers reporting weirdly identical experiences.

The semi-dreams one has during sleep paralysis are usually terrifying. As you might gather from the name, one is paralyzed and incapable of screaming during sleep paralysis. Your body locks all that shit down while you sleep so you don't hurt yourself, which is why we don't physically act out all of our dreams.  That system breaks down sometimes, which is why we have sleep-walking and talking in our sleep and so on.  During sleep paralysis, it's kind of the opposite.  You know you're dreaming and you can tell you're lying in your bed, but there's always another element, too.

When I was young and before I realized that sleep paralysis was a thing, I thought I was haunted by a ghost that came to sit on my chest and fill my mind with an overwhelming and crushing sense of evil. I remember a dull roar in my ears, footsteps around my bed, and absolute dread.  Screaming is impossible and you're frozen in place. I did and do always fight to get out of it, fight to wake myself up, but it's nearly impossible. When it finally breaks, it's like surviving a near-drowning. Gasping for air, blinking in the moonlight streaming in my windows, feeling the goosebumps on my arms.

It usually comes when I'm absolutely exhausted.  Last night, I slipped out of real sleep and into sleep paralysis for the first time in a month or two. The funny thing is that even thought I'm lying there knowing what's happening and knowing it's not real, I'm still terrified.  Last night, I thought there was a rapist standing in my room.  I could hear him breathing, I could hear him laughing maniacally under his breath.  I felt the blankets being pulled away and someone grabbing my legs.  Trying to wake yourself up is like trying to break through a thick and inpenetrable fog.  Sometimes you feel it thinning and think you're almost there, but then it closes around you again.  These days I just try to stay calm and wait it out.

I'm lucky that last night I only had one.  I don't get them so often anymore, usually only every few months, but if I have one episode in a night I'll usually have two or three.

So have you ever had sleep paralysis? Laid in bed unable to move while listening to someone whisper your name in your ear and feel your bed being rocked back and forth? Felt evil crush into your mind? Tried to fight it by thinking of happy things, only to feel it press all the harder as if it's angry?  You're not alone, and it's not real.  It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.  Maybe if you repeat that to yourself often enough you'll be able to convince yourself next time it happens.