Friday, March 3, 2006

never mind, I don't want to sleep. (lol)

Feeling terrified to sleep....
Listening to "ready, steady, go" - paul oakenfold
Currently addicted to reading, I guess.
Currently irritated by this pounding headache; the want to sleep but the fear to do so.
Current MSN details: ??
Today's Cards: n/a

It's 5:15 in the morning at the time I've started to write this. I just woke up and I absolutely refuse to go back to sleep. I've had a short but very jarring night terror, in the vein of the 'usual' ones.

I just knew I had to have another episode sooner or later. Everyone who talks to me knows I was a bit worried about getting one just a few weeks back. I also had a fleeting feeling as I fell into sleep that I would get one this time I slept, because I'd already woken up once in the night (I was thirsty at about midnight, woke up, stayed up for two hours reading) and was having a powerfully hard time getting back to sleep--for me, these are prime factors for sleep paralysis, and if things are bad, sleep terrors.

This one shouldn't have been quite as scary because it's happened so many times before but it was pretty damned bad because of a few changes. I'll try to describe what happened because talking about it is helping me relax and realize I'm awake now.

I woke up suddenly, and knew instinctively that I was in bed because I remember thinking, "Damn, it's so hot under these covers." Hearing the usual whirring of my fan, I was going to simply turn over on my other side to feel the fan better. And then I couldn't move. I couldn't open my eyes, and then I felt the familiar presence. I thought, "Oh fuck, here it comes again."

When you've got sleep paralysis, you can struggle and struggle with all the strength you've got in you and you'll still be unable to move an arm, unable to even open your eyelids--it's that bad. I didn't hear my fan anymore and the silence was murder...and the presence was coming towards my bed. When it finally got to standing at the side of my bed, I couldn't see it (I never have) but I knew what it was like somehow. I sensed its arms raising over me, trying to do something clearly malicious.

These sorts of feelings are NEVER rosy and happy. Santa Claus never traipses into your room and the two of you hang out over milk and cookies. NO. This thing is a shadow...something demonic. Something deeper than demonic. And it wants to fucking kill you, or something worse--you know that immediately and I assure you, the feeling is nothing short of terrifying. Especially because you're lying there, exposed, vulnerable, and unable to do anything about it because you're paralyzed.

I kept struggling to move my entire body but I couldn't. I felt like this entity was holding its arms out over me, exerting some power, and whatever that power was, it was making me...shake. I can't explain it any better than that, but it seemed as if I was convulsing without...moving physically. I'm sorry if that makes no sense; it's something you'd have to experience to know. This time I also heard a noise, but thinking back on it right now, I'm not sure when the noise actually occurred. It was a sort of humming, that was getting louder and louder, like this thing was emitting it as it was shaking me.

The thoughts, You know, this happened before, you know you'll just fall out of it, try to calm down, entered my head, and when they did, my body relaxed and the effort I previously used to try and move my whole body instead concentrated in my eyes. And I opened them--not even halfway, but goddamn it...I opened them. Do you want to know what I saw? You probably think, "nothing, thank god" but no.... I wish I could've seen nothing.

I saw a shadowy sleeve...something ripped up and clearly an arm. Think of the ringwraiths from LotR. The way they're shaped, hooded and cloaked, is just how I always sense them, and the sleeve seemed to verify that. The sleeve was retreating out of my line of sight, and exhausted from the simple effort to barely open my eyes (or eye), I closed them again. I felt the sinister feelings fade away with the...thing...and I allowed my self to calm down. Oddly enough, I didn't black out, or at least I didn't feel I did.

I opened my eyes when I'd finally gone over things in my head, and got out of bed, fully awake. I hadn't been sleeping from the time it happened to now, it felt like. That's part of why these things are so horribly scary, I think. Maybe I did black out for a moment and didn't realize it, or maybe this was just a full-on waking event. I know with night terrors you're always supposed to feel completely awake, even more so than a vivid dream. Vivid nightmares come nowhere close to feeling this real.

[takes a deep breath] I feel so much better getting that out...I know sometimes I've laughed when I told people my mum had a bad dream and wanted to sleep in my room. But that's only to sort of ease up the bad feelings I get when she does it, so no one will know how much it disconcerts me. We both get sleep terrors, I'm sure of it now, and I never mind if she wants to sleep in my room when it happens. I know that might sound weird to some of you, but if you had these episodes too, you'd definitely want as much company as you could find. I'm going to get a bit of reading done to ease my mind a bit further. Even though I've only gotten a total of four hours of sleep tonight, I definitely won't be going back to sleep any time soon. :P

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