As most of you know I suffer from insomnia. I've never slept well. It's always been part of who I am. To the point that I had no idea it wasn't the way everyone was until I was a teenager. I assumed everyone had stretches where they went days without a full night's sleep. And that a full night's sleep wasn't supposed to be a few hours asleep, a few hours awake, another hour asleep, lie in bed until you have to get out. I thought that was how everyone did it. And we talk like that's normal, most everyone is tired all the time. Most everyone wants more sleep. So I just figured that meant everyone slept, or didn't sleep as the case may be, like me.
Now I know that there are mythical creatures that can get to sleep almost every night with ease. Who sleep through the night and if for some reason they wake up in the middle of the night they can get right back to sleep. The lucky weirdos.
Anyway, along with not sleeping chronic insomnia comes with a whole host of other issues. The worst ones come when it's a really bad stretch of lack of sleep. Mood fluctuations, hallucinations. Those are the worst. Before those happen I get involuntary leg movement. When I'm tired my legs twitch. Hours before I am ready to go to bed. I'll be sitting on the couch and *jerk* there goes the leg. It's incredibly annoying. Especially for someone who has control issues. The whole reason I don't drink a lot is because I don't like feeling out of control. I want to know that if I am doing something it's because I intend to be doing that thing. But when I'm tired, *jerk*, *twitch*, *spasm* Argh! It doesn't keep me awake, and it doesn't really happen once I'm falling asleep. So that's great. I know there are people out there who suffer from this pretty constantly and I feel horribly for them.
But the one that is really weird. The one that used to freak me out until I understood what was happening is called sleep paralysis. See the human brain is an AMAZING thing. And when we are in our deepest sleep cycle and dreaming away about running, climbing, flying, walking, whatevering, our brain has turned off our muscles so we don't actually do those things. Sometimes there's a glitch and you get sleep walkers, or sleep talkers, but for the most part the system works amazingly well. But if you are sleeping and go directly from that deep sleep and skip the non REM sleep stage and just wake up it can take a moment for your brain to catch up. So you lay there in bed unable to move with the last vestiges of whatever you were dreaming still playing in your head.
And you can't move.
At all.
You're awake, possibly a little freaked out by what you were dreaming and you are stuck.
It's a very odd feeling. And it can be really scary if you don't know what is going on. I learned about it when I was pretty young and so it usually doesn't bug me. And because I'm not freaked out by it I can focus on the feeling of it fading away. Of the muscles turning back on. And that is a pretty cool feeling. There is a heaviness to your muscles that you don't feel during the day. A weight to them. A sectioning of them. You aren't aware of them usually, they just are part of you. But coming out from sleep paralysis I can feel them.
The human body is an amazing machine and the way the brain runs it is incredible. The capabilities that we possess and use on a daily basis without ever consciously deciding to use them are incredible. We breath without thought. Our hearts beat without effort. Our muscles switch on and off in sleep. And, in fact, while we are awake. I'm typing this right now but I'm not thinking about what I need to do to move my fingers over the keys. I'm just doing it. And I'm breathing, and my heart is pumping, and my leg is twitching (voluntarily this time around) all while I type away at the keyboard.
So why am I rambling about this right now? Because I think there is a short story brewing around sleep paralysis. I can feel it in there, I just can't make it move. Which is appropo really. I'm hoping that by typing all of this out I will move it around. Because I'm pretty sure it's there, I just need it to wake up a little more.
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