Saturday, August 4, 2007

Hypnopompic hallucination


Occasionally, as I am waking up, I will hallucinate.


Also, I am paralyzed during this hallucination, which makes it, like, 500 times scarier if the hallucination is scary, which it usually is. In fact, 75 percent of the time the hallucination is scary.


This is called hypnopompic hallucination with sleep paralysis. (More observant readers might already have discerned this from the title of this post.)


Here's a record of past episodes:


1. Year after college, waking from my usual sleep schedule of 4 a.m. to 11 a.m., I hear someone pushing a box full of stuff down the hallway. I knew no one else was home. It freaked my shit out. I thought I was going kee-razy.


2. Year after college, same sleep schedule, there were rats on the ceiling, and they were falling on my feet, then scrabbling around. Just my feet. Scrabbling. Shit: freaked out.


3. Two or three years ago, saddled with a more adult sleep schedule, I discovered upon waking that someone had constructed a beautiful tent that was all sparkly around my bed. Also, the door frame of my closet was painted shiny gold. A little freaked out, but pleased with the general improvement of my boudoir.


4. TOTALLY JUST HAD ONE. I "ran" 20 miles this morning (ran in quotes because we do walk/run intervals), and I was napping it off. Then, alluvasudden: There is a man. Standing over my bed. Who says, "Work it out!" The man was smallish and didn't have a face. I damn near had a heart attack.


It ended; he disappeared. I got up, looked around the apartment to make sure he wasn't there. He wasn't.


The End. Turns out that wasn't a very good story. But I feel better now.

5 comments:

Kathryn said...

Do you say work it out to yourself while you're running? I could see you creating this mantra: work it work it work it out work it out.

Kathryn said...

my picture is starting to give me low self-esteem

Megan said...

are you sure it wasn't kanye west doing his "work-it-out" song? cuz that would be sweet. maybe next time.

flabby-abby1973 said...

Do you like my blog name? How do I get a picture? I want apicture like Kathy has.

Anonymous said...

I'll show you how to make pictures, Abby.

I only wish it were Kanye West, Megan.

I do not say that to myself as I run, Kathy. In fact, almost the entire time I was running, I had that new will.i.am song stuck in my head. "I got it from my mama; I got it from my mama; I got it from my mama; I got it from my mama."

Now I fear it is no longer my summer jam.