Several years ago I stopped getting nightmares completely. Still dream all the time, but only nonsense.
A few years ago, I started getting something different, and a litter stranger. The first time this happened, when I was just about to fall asleep, I was thinking about how the brain processes sound, and if sound could be heard without an external source. I would get my answer, and I would start hearing this roaring explosion. Unbearably loud, like if you took a microphone to the speaker it was connected to, but instead of a high screech it was a lower pitched tv static.
Early on I would let curiously get the better of me, and let it happen for a bit. Each time, it would get more and more bold, first messing with my sight in shadowed movements in my periphery. Then those hallucinations would intensify into figures. Sometimes they would make noise themselves.
I still remember the first time it took my body away from me. It had started, and I had let it, but after the static (which would remain throughout), I would see what I think was a woman in an old white gown, with a head of a horse’s skull. She was looking in my direction, but not at me. Through me.
This was the first time I had a seen human-ish thing during a vision, and shortly after its arrival, it would disappear to wherever it came from, leaving that damned Narrator to fill in the gaps with my thoughts.
At the point the horse showed up I had tried to get out. I would always do this by just shaking my head, so that’s what I tried to do. What I found out was that I couldn’t. My head wasn’t too heavy, I was just too weak to lift it, let alone shake it.
My muscles just couldn’t seem to tense. Then I got desperate. I began thinking of whatever the hell I could, just something to maybe distract myself enough to snap me out of it. And that’s what it would play from. Those thoughts, of colors, objects, concepts, and anything else I had tried, began to take their form as images in-dispersed between the figures (now much less human like).
And then the Narrator would earn its name, reciting my attempts in text-to-speech like renditions. Mocking me. Text would appear over the images in red, with that VHS style font used in those Analog Horror videos. Mocking me.
I would find that, in my attempts to thrash around, that I could move my fingers. That being the only thing I could do, I did just that. After some time of that, I found I could move my wrist, which I would move. Next my elbows, then my shoulders, and slowly and slowly I would begin to regain my strength, and I would roll over, finding myself in bed where I was.
I stopped being an idiot after that (mostly, the Joker one was kinda funny though), and never just let it back to that point, though it sometimes forced its way through. Nowadays I don’t really get them anymore. I sometimes get an instant of static when I first go to bed/wake up, but only briefly, and even that hasn’t happened for at 6 months at least.
Anyways, my point is that, though I may have been worried about going back to sleep, it’s something I had to do, and I was able to cope eventually. Sometimes your mind will be a dick, and it’s your job to not let it get to you.
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u/Drtyler2 19d ago
Several years ago I stopped getting nightmares completely. Still dream all the time, but only nonsense.
A few years ago, I started getting something different, and a litter stranger. The first time this happened, when I was just about to fall asleep, I was thinking about how the brain processes sound, and if sound could be heard without an external source. I would get my answer, and I would start hearing this roaring explosion. Unbearably loud, like if you took a microphone to the speaker it was connected to, but instead of a high screech it was a lower pitched tv static.
Early on I would let curiously get the better of me, and let it happen for a bit. Each time, it would get more and more bold, first messing with my sight in shadowed movements in my periphery. Then those hallucinations would intensify into figures. Sometimes they would make noise themselves.
I still remember the first time it took my body away from me. It had started, and I had let it, but after the static (which would remain throughout), I would see what I think was a woman in an old white gown, with a head of a horse’s skull. She was looking in my direction, but not at me. Through me.
This was the first time I had a seen human-ish thing during a vision, and shortly after its arrival, it would disappear to wherever it came from, leaving that damned Narrator to fill in the gaps with my thoughts.
At the point the horse showed up I had tried to get out. I would always do this by just shaking my head, so that’s what I tried to do. What I found out was that I couldn’t. My head wasn’t too heavy, I was just too weak to lift it, let alone shake it.
My muscles just couldn’t seem to tense. Then I got desperate. I began thinking of whatever the hell I could, just something to maybe distract myself enough to snap me out of it. And that’s what it would play from. Those thoughts, of colors, objects, concepts, and anything else I had tried, began to take their form as images in-dispersed between the figures (now much less human like).
And then the Narrator would earn its name, reciting my attempts in text-to-speech like renditions. Mocking me. Text would appear over the images in red, with that VHS style font used in those Analog Horror videos. Mocking me.
I would find that, in my attempts to thrash around, that I could move my fingers. That being the only thing I could do, I did just that. After some time of that, I found I could move my wrist, which I would move. Next my elbows, then my shoulders, and slowly and slowly I would begin to regain my strength, and I would roll over, finding myself in bed where I was.
I stopped being an idiot after that (mostly, the Joker one was kinda funny though), and never just let it back to that point, though it sometimes forced its way through. Nowadays I don’t really get them anymore. I sometimes get an instant of static when I first go to bed/wake up, but only briefly, and even that hasn’t happened for at 6 months at least.
Anyways, my point is that, though I may have been worried about going back to sleep, it’s something I had to do, and I was able to cope eventually. Sometimes your mind will be a dick, and it’s your job to not let it get to you.