The Paradise Of Paralysis

A cool breeze rushed through the cracked window adjacent my bed, softly kissing my rosy cheeks. I quickly awoke. My eyelids darted open, revealing the blank darkness of the ceiling in the nighttime. I felt the coolness of the air travel straight through my body into the bones at the core of my limp body. My blanket had fallen to the floor, prompting the strong urge to reach for it. Yet when my arms attempted to move they were met with a harsh stiffness. I laid there staring at the ceiling in immense confusion. I tried once again and once again failed. My brain said move, but my body said stay. These calm demands quickly became screams. Screams of the internal met with a stark silence of the external. Seemingly enough, no matter how urgently loud the request seemed, my muscles refused to listen. From the darkness a bone chilling fear washed over me like the water over the unsuspecting sand at the end of a wave. A fear that built inside me growing exponentially with every tick of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. I felt the cold sweat of this fear roll down my cheek. The fear brought upon me an array of questions. Questions to myself asking if I still maintained my sanity. Questions that went to the point of me wondering if I was dead and didn’t know it. The realization then occurred to me. I was experiencing sleep paralysis. An issue that I had been constantly tortured by for the last eight months. You would think that by now I would immediately realize that this was the culprit. But you would be wrong. It is now an understanding of mine that one does not know the unnatural feelings of sleep paralysis until one has experienced it themselves. I have made repeated visits to the doctors and specialist who all prescribe the same unsuccessful medicines. Sadly for me, the placebo effect hasn’t quite taken place. They talk to me with the same medical mumbo jumbo terminology learned in medical school. I plea to them for a solution, still they cease to understand. The fear began to subside, but the frigidness of the air lingered. I tried to move for the fifth, sixth, seventh time. I had lost count during my chaotic frenzy. There was no point in trying to move. So I just laid there. Lifeless yet full of life. My body felt uncharacteristically soothed. The pain from the daily wear and tear gone with the wind out the window. Pain that emotionally ripped my heart to shreds was instantly gone. It felt as if someone had come and lifted the crown of thorns off my head that had been forced onto it by my heavy burdens. A sense of both physical and mental calmness passed over me. A calmness that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. In fact the last time I felt this calm was during my last encounter with the issue. I was then aware of something I had never realized before. This was the only time I was truly at peace. My daily life was awful. I dreaded every work day with a passion. My physical and mental health were at an all time low. And all my hope and energy lost dealing with the custody battle of my dear sweet daughter after me and my wife’s divorce. The dark room that had once felt like hell on earth now comparable to the likes of heaven. A body that previously felt like a prison now seemed to be a paradise of perfection. Maybe I had been looking at it all the wrong way. From the wrong point of view. A bad angle one may say. While these nights of sleep paralysis always started with a prying panic they always offered peaceful euphoria in the end. It was a price I was willing to pay. It was no longer a curse, but a blessing in disguise. My arm fell to the ground reluctantly fetching the blanket. It was over. I dosed off to sleep dreaming of my next dose of the only drug that could ease my pain. Sleep paralysis. Ironically while asleep, I had been awakened.