From
the age of five or so on, I remember having strange experiences I thought of like
dreams. Sometimes it does not seem like these are dreams to me at all, but that
I am awake during the occurrence. Maybe it is a state that is related to dreams
on a certain level. The first strange thing I ever remember happening at a time
I should have been sleeping, or dreaming about childhood things that everyone
else probably dreamed about at the age of five, happened when I was not asleep
at all. At least I remember thinking I was awake at the time. I was lying
there, trying to sleep. I could hear the television on in the next room. I was the
youngest, so I had to go to bed while everyone else was still up and watching
TV. As I was trying to not hear the TV, I started to hear a very loud siren-type
sound in my head, similar to the “attention” alarm that phones used to make
when they were left off the hook. This used to freak me out when it happened. I
would turn over, and it would stop. Eventually, I would sleep for real, and
dream. Sometimes I had standard scary dreams. Sometimes the dreams I had were
terrifying, but more than the usual nightmares, because it seemed to me I was
awake during them.
Sometimes my “dreams,” or what happened in them, seemed to be
beneficial. Once, when I had had a very loud and obnoxious cough that would not
go away, I had an experience that to me seemed like it happened while I was awake.
I had been asleep at night and woke up with a severe coughing spell. It would
not stop. I became aware that someone had come to help me. I assumed when
thinking of it later, that it had been one of my parents. Whoever it was,
helped me out of bed, and guided me down our long, dark hallway, to the
bathroom. I had been tending to cough so much that I would get spasms that made
me choke, and cough up small amounts of liquid- or maybe it was the choking
that made me cough. I had choked a few times in my sleep due to this earlier in
my illness. I was now in the bathroom, coughing, and leaning over to the toilet
bowl, just in case. Suddenly, the light went on, and one of my parents was
there. I do not remember which at this point. I thought that they had been with
me all along. How else would I have gotten there in a dark house? The spell
gradually subsided, and I went back to bed. The next day, after talking to my
parents about this, they informed me that they had not gotten up until they
heard me in the bathroom. I remember being guided, with whoever it was holding
me by my shoulders, from behind. Many years later, this experience came up in
conversation with my brother. We had shared a bedroom at this point but had not
talked about this at the time it happened. He told me that from his
perspective, he had been awakened by my coughing, which had been a frequent
occurrence. This time, he said that I was talking (in between coughs) to
someone. He could not tell for sure what I was saying, or at that point, it was
long gone from his memory. Did I dream that someone came to help me to the
bathroom, and ended up there? I know I did not truly wake up until the light
came on, but I thought I was awake the entire time up to that point. I write
that about being sure I was awake then, but you know, I am still not convinced
I was not awake at that point. The thing that changed was that the light came
on. It exploded in my head when it came on, and that jolt I think made me more
aware of where I was. But, I still feel I was awake the entire time. I have not
ever been a sleepwalker, but I guess this one instance could be close to that.
I remember one dream from around the age of five. How many my
age remember a dream from when you were five? In this dream, I was in our backyard.
Suddenly, I saw a ghost floating towards me. I realized I must be dreaming, and
tried to wake up, but I could not. This thing kept coming closer and eventually
got to me. It touched me, and immediately, the dream scene vanished, and I was
enveloped by shrill sounds, and wind, and vibrations all over my body. I
struggled to wake up, and even though I know this was only a dream, and should
not be able to hurt me, I really was afraid I was going to die before I could
wake up. I could not move. I tried my hardest to move, and finally, I jerked my
head to the side and woke up. Even though I was awake, and looking around in
the room, I could still hear that sound and felt slightly like I was floating.
Images blurred in the darkness and floated around me. Gradually, the sound
faded, and I could see a bit more clearly. I used to think that if I could
think about a scary dream enough, it would lose its control of me. In the case
of these dreams, that did not always work. I would think about it, and finally,
settle back into bed to try to sleep. Immediately I would hear that same shrill
sound in my head and realize that I could not move again. I would once again
struggle to move until I could force myself to wake up. But how could I have
gone to sleep and started dreaming again in just a relative few seconds that
this all took? Again, I was only five or maybe going on six at this time.
Maybe, I thought, just maybe everyone goes through this, and it does not mean
there is something wrong with me. Thinking back on my childhood, this is probably
among the top issues that impacted me at that time, aside from school or
dealing with parents. And it was a major impact.
The night would start like any other night. I would be in a
dream as stated above, and suddenly, I would just know that something out there
in the dream was different. After a while, I knew that the noises and
vibrations would start soon if I could not wake up first. I had a dream once
that I was in a large house, and suddenly I knew it was about to start. I was
terrified. Then I had a dream that I was walking across a bridge where we
vacationed at the Russian River, and a large truck went by. The wind from the
truck passing started it. The dream may vary, but the result was always the
same. I would struggle to get out of the sensations. I would wake up, and the
sensations would sometimes still be going on as I struggled to fully wake up.
Once it all stopped, I would lay there for hours, afraid to sleep again. I
would allow myself to sleep, and it would happen again. I would again struggle
to get out of it, and the cycle would repeat. Sometimes it would happen three
or four times in a night. It definitely impacted my sleep for several years.
But, it was not an every night thing. I would go for a few months with nothing
happening, and then one night- boom. It was back. Maybe it would happen for a
few nights consecutively, and then it would be gone again for a few months.
Sure, I had typical nightmares too, but they were common,
dull dreams, and I knew they were not the same thing. But, I still used to
think of these experiences I would struggle with at night as nightmares, if it
happened to me in a dream. Sometimes things happened to me when I thought I was
still awake too. It is hard to think of an experience as a dream if you are
convinced you are awake when it happens.
In these instances, I would be awake. I might have just
gotten into bed. Maybe a minute has passed, and suddenly I would have that
“knowing” feeling I described having had in a dream. I just would know that something
was going to happen. And the same sensations, the same noises, and the same
struggle to get it to stop would follow. And all through this, I would hear the
same sounds in the room that I had been aware of before laying down. It is this
continuity of full consciousness that started to make me wonder what was
happening to me in this experience. Since then, I have seen that experiences
like this are generically referred to as being caused by sleep paralysis, or
SP. SP, I later learned, is a process that everyone goes through in the natural
course of falling asleep. It is the mind’s way of protecting you from
physically acting out any dream that you may experience. Of course, the
majority of people usually are asleep before the process happens or are usually
unaware of it when it is happening. One common occurrence in SP episodes, for
those of us who are aware of them, is for the person to experience auditory or
visual hallucinations. Of course, I did not know any of this when I was
younger, and if I had, it still would not have helped to stop the experience.
If I had mentioned this to any doctors at the time, I am sure if they knew
anything at all about it at all, or thought that they did, they would have
prescribed some sort of pill to attempt to get me to sleep better. What I know
now from others who have the same experience, and have had doctors try to fix
it with medication, is that it does not work. The pills dull you out and you
may sleep better for a while, but the experiences still happen.
Back then, I did not feel I could talk to anyone about any of
this. Either it was common for it to happen or people would think I was weak
because I was having a problem with what to them would be trivial, or no one
would know what I was talking about, and I would be labeled as “crazy.” Neither
one seemed to be a good choice. It was clear to me when talking very carefully
to friends about the things they experienced in dreams, that they either did
not have similar things happen to them or if they did have them, they did not
feel comfortable talking about it with me. I did eventually bring it up to a
good friend, just after high school. But I still had several years to go before
anyone else knew what happened to me at night.
The SP experience has some constants and other things that
can vary. One constant is a very loud grating noise in the center of your head.
People have described it as being similar to what you might have heard if the
amplifier speaker for Jimi Hendrix’s guitar was inside your head, or what it
might feel and sound like if someone started a gas-powered chainsaw while you
had your head against it. I am not sure I would say my experiences were exactly
like what these, but it will give you an idea of what it can be like. I
remember thinking that I was afraid my hearing would be damaged by this and
wondering why no one else could hear it and come help me. My own experiences
were closer to the guitar in general, but with the overtones of the chainsaw in
the mix. Imagine hearing a sound that you could not identify, that was loud
enough for you to be sure you were going to go deaf from being exposed to it,
and then realizing you can not move and no one else was going to help you. This
is how some of my nights went when I was between five, and around fifteen years
old. Then one night, all of this changed.
