August 28, 2007
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trapped
A few hours ago I had the strangest most disturbing experience.
I was lying in my bed on my back. I had just been napping for an hour or so and then I was trying to wake up and get up and do some stuff.
And I felt as if I was awake. I could feel my eyes being open I could see the light from my lamp, the ceiling everything around me. It all looked so normal. Just like it did when I went to sleep.
And my eyes felt droopy like there was something in them, so I remember moving my left hand up stretching it out above me and I could feel my arm moving, see my hand out in front of me and then I would reach down toward my face to rub my eyes….
Only my hand would never contact my eyes. As soon as my hand got close to my face it would end up at my side again, right where it was when I was sleeping. I did this again and again and couldn’t ever rub my eyes.
Then I tried to touch other parts of me and even to pinch myself and each time I could feel my arms and hands moving, even see them moving but I can’t come into contact with myself. Then I tried to shake myself awake to move my head from side to side or to bend my back and sit up. But I can’t! I feel paralyzed like I can’t move at all, like I’m pinned to my bed. I try to talk or cry out but I can’t do that either.
At this point I realize that I must still be sleeping and this feeling that I am awake is some sort of illusion. And then I say to myself ok, so I’m asleep and I want to wake up. Then comes the struggle. I feel myself fighting with myself and it is a painful fight going on right in my brain as I try to force myself from this weird not really awake state into a real awake state. The struggle seems to go on forever and it *hurt*. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was really really hard and I was getting to be afraid, very afraid, that I just wasn’t going to wake up at all. I was trapped inside my own head! It scared the crap out of me honestly. I don’t think I’ve been that afraid for a very very long time.
Eventually somehow I won myself free. It was weird though in the immediate after math of my having woken up I couldn’t really tell the difference between my being awake and asleep. My mind still felt lethargic my body slow and deliberate. I felt insubstantial, like I wasn’ really there. But then I rubbed my eyes and felt contact and I sat up and stretched and felt pain. I felt absolutely crappy, like every muscle in my body was a little bit stiff and uncomfortable like I had literally just been in a fight for my life. But I felt a sense of relief too for having succeeded in waking myself up. Somehow.
But the fear lingered on well after I woke up.
I’ve experienced things like this before, moments where I was struggling to wake myself up and couldn’t seem to achieve it. It’s never a nightmare or anything, it usually has no images or sensations to it at all except the conscious knowledge that a part of my mind is very much ready for me to be awake whereas the rest of my body just seems to be in rebellion and refuses to wake up. But this was the worst of all. Usually it only lasts for like a minute, and I almost almost always immediately able to force myself awake after that. It bothers me, but I usually quickly forget about it and I am never left feeling particularly physically bad afterwards. This time it went on and on and I felt horrible after I woke up. But the worst was that feeling of thinking I had succeeded in waking myself up, feeling as if I was awake when I really wasn’t. That seriously freaks me out just thinking about it.
I wonder if there is something wrong with me. Was I having some kind of a mental fit or something or is this an entirely normal feeling? Whatever it was it was so freakishly scary, I start to fear that one day I might enter into that state and just never be able to wake myself up, or maybe the struggle to wake myself causes me some serious mental or physical harm or kills me. Worse, maybe I trick myself into thinking that I am awake all the time when I am really caught in some sort of a fake and tedious dream world. My mind could be caught in a kind of broken record where I just end up repeating that feeling of moving my hand up in front of my face again and again for all eternity.
Fear is a strange motivator. It can make you choose to do things that you would otherwise hesitate to do. I just started to think after I woke up that well if I am destined to one day fall sleep and just never wake up, I guess I’d better make myself do everything I can do right now. No matter what. I just can’t afford to miss a moment.
I will also probably mention this to my doctor next time I see him, just in case.
