First of all, my dreams pretty much never make any sense. When they do make sense, I can still subconsciously tell that they are not quite dreams. I also very rarely can remember the subject of my dreams, unless I write them down. Which I pretty much never do, because I rarely care enough to actually record what is going on in my dreams. Nevertheless, I’m going to write about one of my sleep paralysis experiences, because that is something that I can still remember quite vividly because I had never had it happen before, Now, if you’ve also had sleep paralysis, you would probably remember that it is something that you don’t really forget because of how alarming and jarring it can be. This experience I had happened before I had any clue about what sleep paralysis was, like I had literally never heard of it and had no idea it was something that existed.
I don’t remember how long ago this was, I don’t remember the context of the day, and I don’t really remember what happened afterwards. I just remember “waking” to a loud ringing noise in my ears, and I tried to turn over. I couldn’t move at all, I could move my eyes around, but that’s all. I tried to speak and couldn’t move my mouth to form words. I couldn’t move my limbs either, though I could still look around the slight darkness of the room. There’s a street light outside of my window at my parents house, so there is pretty much always some form of light coming into the room. I kept trying to call out, or convince my limbs to move, but I couldn’t. My senses were locked into the current situation, and as much as I tried to fight it, the ringing and paralysis of the body did not go away for what felt like forever. I looked to the corner of the room eventually and saw a shadowy figure, something that is apparently common for sleep paralysis. Eventually, I was able to begin regaining control of my limbs and the ringing in my ears stopped. I had to look up what the hell happened, right after it happened. Due to my sleep schedule, I had sleep paralysis a couple more times after that. Most notable after an international flight, where my sleep schedule had been completely reversed. Though by this point, I already knew what was happening and that I could simply move my fingers slightly and eventually I would snap out of it. I don’t believe in the supernatural, so no shadowy figure can convince me to be anything other than one of the many strange things that the human mind is capable of producing while under stress.
