Towel Reaper
Stuck. But why? This is not quite like being awake. The edges of reality haven’t yet rendered, the picture isn’t quite clear. Like a dream, I am not conscious enough to question this unrendered reality. But if this a dream, why am I in my bed?
Emptiness. Dreams contain chaos, absurdity, but never this void. This moment holds nothing. Gradually, physical awareness returns: the weight of blankets, the texture of my pillow, the curve of my body resting on one side. […] My eyes can move! They traverse this emptiness, stopping in the corner.
Terror. The figure I see is a dark cloak with a white face. This is beyond fear or anxiety, those emotions that require a lucid mind to process them. In this limbic state, I do not imagine what this creature may do to me. “Doing” requires consciousness of time, and “me” requires a sense self to be acted upon, I have neither. And that white face!—its growing! Or is it? Is my sole sense playing a trick? I am trying to scream, but my mouth betrays me to silence. I try to move, everything, or anything, even a single finger. I am aware my limbs exist, but they too betray me. I do not experience terror as an emotion, terror is experiencing itself through me. […]
I wake up, still facing the corner. In the morning light, I see my white towel hanging on the door.
I had episodes like this, multiple times a night. Every night.
I was 19 when the sleep paralysis started. I had known about the condition; I had read descriptions. But I absolutely did not understand the terror people had described until I myself had experienced it.
The groundwork had been laid months preceding my first episode. My sleep was already poor: 6ish hours on good nights, with occasional all-nighters. At worst, I had only had sleep deprivation induced audio hallucinations at this point. My stomach and bank account shared the same emptiness. I was 2 months behind on classes (3 months into the semester). And I had a job. Standard college struggle, but perhaps on the extreme end.
And then my life fell apart, spectacularly and suddenly. All my existing stressors were magnified several times over. The events themselves aren’t that important to this story, but I failed multiple exams in the fallout. After feeling sorry for myself for a bit, I got angry. I couldn’t control the chaos in my personal life but, dammit, I was not going to fail my classes. And so I pushed myself harder. Eating, socializing, exercise, those became mere memories instead needs I maintained, however infrequently. I was going at least 24 waking hours between sleeping. 36 or 48 were not uncommon. When I did sleep, it was for 4-5 hours at a time, with recurring sleep paralysis.
I became afraid of my bed because of the paralysis. Sleep is supposed to be for peace, the break from the noisy world, but for me, it was the oncoming torture. But eventually, as much as I may delay it, I had to sleep again.
In the Cover of Night
The darkness should be comforting me. It’s not. Like the last few nights, my body refuses every command to move. I thought I could stop the hallucinations if I covered my eyes with my blanket. But my mind, deprived of visual terror, is creating new ones. The blanket is a hood forced over my face. It’s hard to breath!—is my mouth covered too? My body is in restraints. That noise!—who is moving around me? I must be getting abducted!
The good thing about never ending sleep paralysis is that the frequency makes it easy to get used to. I still hated waking up trapped in my unresponsive body. I still felt panic surge through me. But after a week, the visual hallucinations stopped. The edges of pure, raw terror of those first few nights faded.
Reading up about the condition made it seem less foreign. I decided that some combination of sleep deprivation, anger, isolation, hunger, and insane stress were the likely cause. But my sleep paralysis differed from descriptions I read online in one odd way. Mine was paired with lucid dreaming. When you think about the brain mechanics involved, it makes sense. Both involve your mind “waking up” when it should be asleep. My nights had a rhythm: I would wake into sleep paralysis, with fear, eventually falling asleep into a lucid dream, then wake into to paralysis, fall into a lucid dream. Alternating, constantly.
Deepest Desire
The trapped sensation melts away. I’m now seated on my friend’s couch, across from her. We are talking, but I don’t hear our conversation. I notice I’m looking at myself from an outside perspective, like watching myself on TV with the volume turned low. How can he (me) be there, and I be here? […] I’m (lucid) dreaming. He doesn’t react to my realization. He simply gestures and says something to my friend.
I feel control. I can change the scene; live any reality I desire. But I look at him smile. When was the last time I smiled like that? When was the last time I sat with a friend and just talked about nothing important? I think I’d like to stay here a little longer […].
When I wake from that dream, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about what I’d chosen. I could do anything, and I chose that mundane moment. No, not mundane. Normal. My deepest desire is to feel a little normal.
My sleep paralysis episodes gradually decreased as life stabilized, though it took almost a year for my sleep to go back to mostly normal. That was delayed, I suspect, by my decision to work night shifts right after that tumultuous semester. When I started this job, I was having episodes 1-3 times a week. That gave me plenty of opportunity to experiment.
Through trial and error, I discovered a reliable escape method: channel all my focus into moving just my right index finger, get it to move. Something about this small movement signaled to my brain that movement was possible again. Before developing this technique, episodes trapped me for upwards of ten minutes; with practice, I reduced this to less than a minute. Eventually, though, I questioned the point of forcing myself awake at 3 AM. Instead, I learned to manage the fear, to breathe through the paralysis, and simply drift back to sleep.
I learned the cues of when paralysis would come on. Poor sleep for consecutive nights or melatonin use both dramatically make it more likely. Strangely, using my phone before bed makes it it less likely. For some reason, it would happen more on eventful days. On such days, I hear conversations from the day replay as audio hallucination when I am drifting off to sleep. Another indicator is exceptionally vivid “mini-dreams” that happen right as a fall asleep, which I usually wake up from in a few minutes.
Most surprisingly, I figured out a way to trigger paralysis that works about half of the time. Though I have no physiological explanation for why this works, the technique follows a simple principle: convince my brain I’ve lost control of my body. I choose a limb, say my right arm, and “disconnect” it from my mind by thinking about moving it while simultaneously keeping it motionless. After a few minutes, I would actually begin to lose sensation in my arm, as if my brain was accepting the idea that it was no longer under my control. I’d repeat this with my left arm, then each leg, then my neck. By the time I’d “disconnected” my entire body, I’d slip into paralysis. Something about the mental contradiction convinces my brain I had lost control of my body, and thus I must be in paralysis.
With all of these discoveries, the mystery was gone, and I no longer feared paralysis. In fact, I started looking forwards to what it brought with it.
Above and Below
A corridor with walls of turquoise inlaid with gold filigree that pulses with its own light. A silent attendant, a figure whose face seems perpetually just out of focus, guides me. I know I am in Atlantis, though I cannot recall how this journey began. The passersby move with their golden tridents. One points his trident. Is he pointing for me—or at me? […] I’m (lucid) dreaming.
The attendant dissolves as my lucidity strengthens. I move through the palace halls with new freedom, running my fingers along cool stone that somehow feels both solid and not. The palace is a maze of paths, both outdoors and indoors, for me to weave through. I find myself in a grand library, though I did not use those paths to get there. Likewise, I appear now in a lentic observatory, having taken no steps.
[…]
What does the entire city look like?
Before the thought fully forms, before I realize I’ve even conceived it, reality realizes it, and suddenly I am swimming at the seafloor. I look up from the sand, my eyes finding the Lost City. A transparent spherical boundary contains the metropolis. But within this boundary, details remain elusive. Those are towers, are they not, that reach dramatically toward the ocean surface? And those must be bridges of coral and crystal that connect them. If only I could see the structures clearly to be certain. Surely, it must be an image of splendor! But it eludes my mind’s capacity to render it, leaving only an impression where the image should be.
My excitement mounts as I strain against these limitations, concentrating harder to force the vision into focus. The dream responds to my emotional state. Its edges quiver and thin. I recognize the sensation. Wakefulness approaches, sleep’s grasp weakening precisely because I’ve demanded more than my dreaming mind can produce. In desperation, I look down at a nearby coral formation, focusing on its simpler structure, counting the fish that dart around it. But I’ve overreached. My curiosity has broken the dream’s delicate balance. Atlantis, you’re lost once more!
Lucid dreaming became my experimental counterpart to sleep paralysis.
Initially, I tested the boundaries aggressively. I would attempt to fly, walk through walls, or summon fictional characters. These actions required intense concentration, something surprisingly difficult to maintain while dreaming. Whenever I managed to execute these fantastical scenarios, my excitement would spike so dramatically that I’d begin to rouse from sleep, leaving the dream dissolving around me. My mind was both the architect and visitor of these fragile fantasies.
I don’t have a strong ability to visualize in general, and that limitation followed me into dreams. Flying, which should have been exhilarating, often felt disappointingly abstract. My mind couldn’t render the visuals of the world moving rapidly moving around me, nor the feeling of wind rushing against my face.
I developed techniques to maintain dream stability. Simple reality checks, like attempting to push my finger through my hand, helped anchor my lucidity without destabilizing the dream. Instead of taking full control of reality, it was easier and more stable to work within the context of a dream, explore its environment rather than conjure something completely new.
And, despite the limitations, I found that there was a beauty in exploring a world made by my subconscious mind. There are only so many things I find interesting, consciously. But my subconscious is not bound by those interests. It puts me in scenarios I never thought to would appeal to me. I’d never consciously choose to visit a coal mine, but for some reason, if I became lucid during such a dream, I would have an inexplicable sense of purpose and fascination roaming around the mine.
Somehow, by playing the role of scientist and subject, I had made my nights into a grand exploration.
Brother?
My eyes open. It’s bright out. Did I leave the lights on? Maybe I took a nap. I try to get up, but I can’t. I must be having sleep paralysis again. I decide I’ll break out this time. I focus on moving a finger.
Nothing.
I focus harder. Still nothing.
Unease is spreading through me now. Why isn’t this working? My mind pushes harder, willing the movement, demanding it. Nothing. Why isn’t it working? Focus on my finger again. I can’t focus. My mind is scattered. This isn’t how this goes. This never fails. I’m supposed to be in control. The silence in my head is deafening. How long have I been frozen here? I can’t tell the second from the minute or from the hour. Why, why is time not moving right? How many seconds are in eternity? My eyes try to shield away from the burning brightness but they can’t close. My chest tries to heave with panic but doesn’t rise. My throat tries to scream but has nothing to produce. And the scream! — it’s building inside, from a humming to an ever-louder buzzing, pushing and pressing against the walls of my skull with nowhere to go, louder and louder and louder in each moment I lay stuck.
Someone is sitting next to me! That’s my brother! He’s sitting upright on the bed, next to me. I can feel the depression in the mattress where he sits. He’s wearing his pink shorts and light blue shirt, reading his book. I hear the soft whisper of a page turn. He’s so close. If he touches me, surely I’ll jolt awake! His attention is all I need.
“Help me,” I beg. He doesn’t look up, of course he doesn’t, because no words have been spoken. The only response is whisper of another turning page.
“Please… just look at me,” I silently scream. Yet every page he turns is oblivious to me. If he cannot save me, sitting right next to me, then no one can. I am completely alone in this terror-struck reality and no one will know it. And if he finishes reading, then he will stand up to leave, and close the door behind him, and leave me even more alone. And I’ll still be here, always here.
“won’t anyone … please … help me?“
[…]
I blink up at my ceiling. It’s dark now. But the lights, they were on. I’m certain they were on. I look around, and my whole bedroom is dark. I turn onto my side, toward my brother. But the space where he sat is empty. Yet his presence lingers in my mind with the persistence of truth. I could see the scruff on his face! And those clothes! I know he has worn that exact combination before! Did he get up and leave? And how did the lights turn off?
And then I remember.
My brother lives across the country. Of course. How could I forget?
But I don’t hallucinate anymore. I haven’t since it first began almost 3 year ago, when I couldn’t control anything. I’m past that now. I beat this condition. I don’t see things that aren’t there. I don’t. Still… he looked so real just now.
Every so often, I start to get comfortable, start thinking of this as just a fun quirk or experiment. I almost feel special, as if I’ve achieved some rare understanding of consciousness itself, as if I’ve mastered something others fear. And just as often, my mind delivers the same message: you didn’t master anything. You broke yourself.