I've heard that it does happen to some people once in awhile, but I never expected this terrifying experience to happen to me. Though I can ever so slightly remember similar numbness when I was around ten years old, but nothing as intense as this fleeting episode in the wavering darkness.
You are lying asleep on your back when you awake slightly. You are completely aware of the surroundings and can see the light from the lamp outside reflected across the window as well as the tips of your toes pointing upwards from underneath the sheets. Like a living cadaver but it is not your own body.
Although you are now wide awake you cannot move a single muscle. It is almost as if the brain is disjointed from the physical body. You can feel that there is a body down there but for the life of you, you cannot move it even a single fraction of a millimeter.
There is no movement of the skeletal muscles, nothing, not even a wink of your eye, a shivering sensation along the cortical area, lost and random electricity but that's it.
That's what is so terrifying about it. Until I fell asleep again and then awoke for a second time, this time with all my usual bodily functions having returned to normal. What an odd cycle of awareness that can be returning to life all over again.
At least now I can say that it has also happened to me. I hope it is the last time, but I am a little afraid that the chances of recurrences have increased drastically because of the first time. As if my body is slowly getting used to it and might crave it during the next bout with the borderline rapid eye movements phase. A little bit like a drug addiction punishing me for the past, this or a previous life it does not matter.
Hopefully the next time I should be less terrified, less and less until it seems normal.
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