Ever since that movie came out, everyone’s an expert on sleep paralysis. They think because they are in the one third of the population who inevitably experiences at least one episode over their entire life, we’re in the same boat. They think they understand me.
It’s so frustrating, because when it came out, I thought this might be a chance to get some understanding and empathy. But, on the contrary, now I am feeling more alienated and isolated than ever. Because now sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations are supposed to be some great equalizer.
But we’re not the same. I have had sleep paralysis and hallucinations every single night since I was five years old. And my hallucinations have run the gamut from a malevolent but invisible, sensed presence to complete out-of-body mobility.
And up until a few years ago I wasn’t met with sympathy. I have a small circle of friends who, generally, exhibit some kind of freakish or fringe behavior that leaves us all relatively unpopular except amongst each other.
It was only amongst these friends I ever truly received any consolation for my condition. In fact, they understood my condition so well that they would always ask me about my hallucinations on Monday at lunch.
Because, while my hallucinations were horrific at night, they were actually fairly pleasant upon waking. But only if I woke late after sleeping in. And so, naturally, only on Saturdays or Sundays.
Last Sunday morning I woke to a hot, hazy afternoon. Despite the blinds being drawn, sunlight had managed to create a minor convection current, and so warm air swirled around gradually rousing me, sweaty, from slumber.
I woke paralyzed on my bed. I looked down at my feet, exposed from underneath the blankets. I willed my toes to wiggle, but they would not.
I heard a laborious creaking. The head of bed lifted slowly into the air, as if the baseboards by my feet were hinged to the floor. As the bed angled upward, gravity rolled the sheets away from my body to the floor, and I felt myself limply begin to slide. There at the foot of the bed, which had become a slide, has a huge, gaping hole.
Impossibly black, impossibly deep. Endless. Not just because it was darker than the darkest black. But because I could feel and hear, and God, even smell its interminable depth.
Every fiber of my soul shrieked against it. But I was paralyzed. Still I focused all my desperate soul shrieking into my right big toe. And managed the tiniest wriggle.
The entire bed frame collapsed with a thud back onto the hardwood floor. Relieved, I drew in the big breathe I didn’t even realize I was holding.
But barely had I drawn it before the head of bed started rising again. Again, it ratcheted up like a roller coaster. Again, my eyes crested the foot of the bed. Again, the indescribable soul shrieking when I encountered the terrible pit. Again, my bed threatened to tumble me in.
And what waited for me down there anyway? If there even was a terminus? Maybe it was just an endless falling, stomach in throat. Somehow I knew that would me a mercy. No.
Something waited for me down there.
It happened eleven times. Eleven times I rose, I shrieked internally with all my organs. The bed collapsed and I wasn’t dumped into the pit.
After the eleventh time my mom called me and, somehow, the phone ringing broke the spell. The paralysis was relieved and I got up out of the bed.
And maybe every other person who thinks they know, or whose had a passing dalliance can go about breakfast with their family after something like that. But it took everything in my power to remain composed. To refrain from shaking. To calm my trembling hands and choke down a waffle. To not blurt out some plea for mercy. Because all I wanted was God himself to come down and wrap me in his loving arms and say, “You are good enough, Jay. I will save you today.”
But my same lame prayers fell on the same lame ears, despite my willingness, God.
So yesterday, another Sunday. It happened again. Except my Mom didn’t call me. Again, I woke up late and paralyzed. Again, the hot, hazy summer humidity of a sun-baked room filled my nostrils. Again, as I limply took in the uniform ceiling, the head of my bed began to rise. I lay there helpless as it cranked ever upwards. I saw the abyss waiting for me. I started to slide into its impossible depth.
Smells like freezer burn. Looks like vanta black. Feels like a stranger grabbing your thigh. And I, and I, feel like a motherless child.
I start to slide and every molecule percolates. Bubbles and pops with a inarticulate but ancient “NO!”
SO AROUND WE GO.
over and over. The bed falls down. The bed falls up again and rises down. The bed moves on a hinge from floor to ceiling. From top to ground until I lose all orientation.
And no one calls me so at some point. In the back of my mind, exhausted and ground down I say, “Fuck it.”
Have me.
Let the Hole have me.
And I decide with a deep, peaceful breath. That the next time my bed tries to dump me into the abyss, I will allow it.
But as soon as I decide this, it ends.
My bed stills. The paralysis breaks. The visions cease. I get up and go about my day.
It’s almost beyond belief. I’m eating breakfast, I’m packing my bag. I’m being driven and being dropped off. I’m in homeroom and history and everything else and nothing is out of sorts.
I’m in lunch now. It’s Monday. Apparently, against all odds, I am not only alive and well, but very much the same. From my few friends, one particularly astute one thinks to ask me, “So what about your dreams? You have any screamers?”
And so I tell him. Not only him but everyone within earshot. The whole thing, from one weekend to the next. And I watch the twinkle go out of their eyes. Because the conversation has just gone from casual to deep. And now, if they so choose, they just might have to reckon.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “So what you just dropped in?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. Just as resigned now as I was then.
“And what happened?” He implores.
Our eyes meet. Finally. So sad. All four of them. And I admit, I don’t know. I don’t who I am or where I am. And he nods, knowingly. And I think I see tears about to overflow his corners.
“Maybe you fell in,” He leans back and admits.
“Maybe you’re in the bottom of the pit right now.”
That had not occurred to me. But now, before I can fully contemplate it, my friend next to him stands up, his chair flying out behind him as he screams, “YEAH! MAYBE the pit took you! Maybe you only think you’re here. But really you’re in the BOTTOM of the PIT right now!”
Maybe…
But before I can finish any thought properly, they all stand up, one by one. Hundreds of them. As many as the cafeteria fits. They all stand in turn, look me dead in the eye, and proclaim. “You are in the BOTTOM OF THE PIT RIGHT NOW!”
Are they right, dear reader? All 213 of them?
Where am I anyway?