Call me Mrs. Sandman

                I love the crap out of dreams. I think they are so fascinating. Your dreams can say so much about you. For instance, I have reoccurring dreams about my teeth falling out. Apparently, it means I’m afraid of getting older. That may or may not be true, but for some reason my subconscious mind is creating these images in my head and I wish I knew why.

                Have you ever heard of sleep paralysis? It. Is. Intense. I’ve had it before twice. It’s when there’s a sort of disconnect between your brain and your body. So basically, your mind is awake but you can’t move your body because it doesn’t realize it’s supposed to be awake with your brain.

                Tale tell signs of sleep paralysis are not being able to move, being in a dream state but you know you’re awake, and feeling as though there’s an intruder in the room. Already, it sounds pretty freaky right?

                One night, I had just fallen asleep when I heard the crappy AM/FM radio on my phone turn on. I tried to move to turn it off and immediately realized that I could not move a single muscle in my body. Then it hit me that there was no way my phone radio could turn on like that, and I’m pretty sure there wasn’t even a radio on my phone.

                I began to panic. I couldn’t move, I was trying to talk but it came out in jumbled up jibberish, and I felt that there was someone sitting on my legs. I kept trying to open my eyes to see who it was but everything was blurry because I couldn’t get them open all the way.

                Suddenly I felt a cold breathe in my ear. Like someone was whispering in it, it tickled, but the breath was so cold and tingly. It felt like there was a snow storm inside of my ear. I remember wrestling a little, trying to break away from the cold feeling in my ear when it started to talk.

                YEAH, THE COLD, CREEPY, TINGLY VOICE STUCK IN MY HEAD.. BEGAN TO TALK TO ME. Do you know how horrifying that is? I could’ve sworn there was a ghost talking to me. I did not know how I felt about that.

                The words trickled into my ear like ice, “I am your brother.” First things first, what? I don’t have any brothers. I tried to say, “You’re not my fucking brother.” But it came out sounding something more like, emmmnahterfukerbrozzzzzzz. So telling the ghost to fudge off was not working.

                I could still feel the icicles melting in my ear, but it wasn’t saying anything else. I kept trying to fight the paralysis, knowing that there was something in the room now and I had to get out. I had pangs of panic and adrenaline running in and out of my heart like a busy kitchen. At this point, I honestly believed that there was a force, or presence, or person sitting on me.

                Finally, I broke free. I immediately sat up. I was breathing heavily, preparing to run from the ghost, intruder, or whatever it was. Instead, I saw my room. My plain old, just-how-I-left- it room. My sister was sound asleep in her bed across the room from me.

                The adrenaline drew it’s lines back from my heart, and I began to take deep breaths. I rationalized that it was all sleep paralysis. It was normal, just a common malfunction of the brain.

                The next day, I was having a droning conversation about my parents’ divorce with my mom. I’m assuming that we were talking about family and children because my mom mentioned a miscarriage she had. The first time my parents tried for a baby, they lost it late in the pregnancy. They said I would’ve had an older brother right now, because it was a boy.