I wanted to update you guys, since it’s been a while. Click here, if you missed it. I luckily haven’t had sleep paralysis or even had a trial for at least a week, and even then they were fairly easy. Honestly, I feel like it’s because I got into college! It’s out of state which means I will finally be out on my own, and it’s a full ride so I won’t have to worry about money. I will have to keep my grades up, which will definitely stress me out, but hey, loans would too, right?
Anyways to skip to the point, I thought I would talk about an old trial of mine. Someone asked me how I knew I would die if I failed a trial, and to be fair, I guess I don’t know for sure. I have never “failed” one, but I have been injured, so I am fairly sure I shouldn’t push my luck. Something that has gotten me through some of my later trials is learning from my old ones. So, I was thinking about the first trial that really challenged me. It led to me writing down every trial I go through to really make sure I take them seriously. In this specific one, I almost died because I let my emotions and intrusive thoughts get to me. It also led me to believe that more intense emotions lead to more intense trials, which I’m still not sure of, but who knows? A lot of rules I have developed started out as gut feelings.
The trial started after a really bad day at school, I stupidly went into my room, closed the door, laid down and then started to cry. After a couple minutes, I realized I could hear running water. I wiped my eyes and looked around only to realize that my room was slowly flooding. I tried not to panic and took note of my surroundings. I noticed that the water was coming from all four corners of the room. I was so caught off guard and upset that I couldn’t think straight. I was tempted to just lay down and let the water take me, instead I closed my eyes and took a couple deep breaths. It was only when I felt the water touch my feet that I reopened them. I started scanning my room when I noticed that right in the middle of my ceiling there was an intricate looking tile. I stood on my bed to take a closer look. There were four rings with four animals each. A wolf, an eagle, a rabbit and a deer. Each one displayed one animal at a time. I was tempted to just force the combination but after one try, where I organized them by size, I noticed nothing happened until I pushed a clear dome in the middle of the rings. After doing so, one of three lights turned red in the dome and the water in the room began to pour in faster. A searing pain burst through my head, worse than any migraine I had ever had and I fell off of my bed into the water. I gasped for air, but just as fast as the pain came, it was gone.
After that, I decided to investigate the spouts. I moved my desk chair as best as I could to the closest spout. As I looked at it, I could see an inscription around it. It was the wolf symbol with “Alpha” written underneath. I pulled the chair as fast as I could to the next corner. This one was the deer with the words “Unlucky” written under it. At this point the water was high enough that I didn’t even need to bring the chair with me anymore. I swam to the next one, the rabbit, accompanied by the phrase, “The tortoise and the hare.” I was onto my last clue. The Eagle, written below it, “Michael Collins”… which meant nothing to me. I swam to the middle and thought through my clues. My room was almost filled, as I thought through my clues. The alpha clue felt very clearly like it was the first ring. Tortoise and the hare is my favorite fable and in the fable the rabbit comes in second place which leaves the clue “unlucky”. Between it being a clue for the third or fourth ring, I was leaning towards four. Nothing led me to believe it was three, especially since I was pretty sure the number four was considered unlucky in China. I barely had enough space to breathe when I put the rings into place. Unfortunately, as soon as I pushed the button I saw the second light turn red. I forced myself to ignore the pain as I took one last deep breath, the water covered me completely. I started to panic as my vision blurred. The only thing I could think of was that my guesses were correct but entered backwards. How was I supposed to know where the first ring was?! I fixed it, pressed the button and closed my eyes.
Next thing I knew, I was falling from the ceiling and felt my bedpost slam into my leg. I cried out and my brother came in to check on me. I told him I had fallen and that I thought I had seriously hurt my leg. He managed to help me onto the bed without disturbing my leg. I was so relieved to be alive that it was all I could think about. I couldn’t feel my leg at all. He called my dad into my room. I just laid back on my bed and let him do the talking for me. I felt fine until my dad told me to walk it off. I tried to stand and was immediately overwhelmed by pain. It took all of my remaining strength to not pass out. After that my brother managed to convince my dad to drive me to the hospital and as it turns out, I had fractured my tibia. The doctor told me I was lucky it was only my tibia and that I should make a full recovery. He was baffled when I told him I had slipped and fallen out of the shower, but he seemed to think I was just very unlucky. It did wake me up to the fact that I could get seriously injured in these trials and that next time it could definitely be a lot worse.
Also, apparently Michael Collins was the third person on the moon landing mission in case you were curious. I wish I had been, since we had been discussing the moon landing all week in my history class. Anyways, I should wrap this up. I’ll update you guys again soon, wish me luck.