Twenty-Three
About ten years ago, I woke and was unable to move. I knew immediately I was caught in an episode of sleep paralysis. There was no sense of what time it was, the way there is usually when you wake unexpectedly. The room should’ve been dark, but it wasn’t; it was dim, but had a sepia tint. I felt something to my right – a concentration of unrivalled malevolence that I knew was watching me. Every panic attack I’d ever had, the fear of recovery after the car had hit me, the dread of awaiting test results when they’d initially thought my digestive issues were going to be much more…
Nineteen
When I was a kid, my mum would push the bedside drawers against the bed to act as a barrier because I tended to roll out. I eventually outgrew that, but it was a sign of the sleeping troubles I would always have. In my twenties, I had bad insomnia. I grew tolerant to sleeping tablets. My GP tried a range of other medications where drowsiness was a side effect. For a while, I had success with an antihistamine, but once I grew used to those I went back to (one set of) sleeping tablets and briefly grew addicted. The thing with the sleeping tablets is I liked the way…