Night.

Last night was one of the single scariest nights of my life.

I'm not entirely sure what it actually was, but when I went to bed last night it was terrifying. At first I was fine, got comfortable, laid on my back, a position I don't usually take when I want to go to sleep, because it isn't usually comfortable for me. But last night, it was different, like being buried under six feet of sand. As I started to fall asleep, I began visualizing myself as a dead person, a dead body, laying in a coffin. That's how I was laying down, too. Legs straight, hands over my chest, entirely still. I wasn't sure if I was breathing or not, but it seemed as if every sound I heard simply swirled around me, bursting in on my semi-consciousness with an unnerving brilliance. And the sounds were all around me, from every side, repetitive, quite simply there. It was kind of like, each sound was a soap bubble bursting with a fluorescent gas that swirled around and within my entire body until dissipating. Intruding on the thoughts I didn't have. And it was odd of course, but after a while it started to scare me a little that I was being unnaturally still, that I was resembling a body in a coffin just a tad too closely. So I rolled over onto my side, my hands up and my legs extended. Which was okay. I was comfortable, I was warm, my radio was playing softly. Then everyone else went to bed, and the house was silent. No more outside distractions, no more fluorescent gas swirling within my mind and inside every crevice of my body. Just silence, apart from the faint music swirling out of my radio, like a dense, heavy fog drifting, seeping out of the speakers to lie heavily on my carpet. My eyes started getting heavy almost instantly, sleepy little one. It was almost as though they were too heavy, and I had no choice but to close them almost entirely. But this comes the point where I freak out even to write. Hallucinations. You ever had some of those? Well, I haven't, before. But as I started to fall asleep, it wasn't random things from my day, random words, thoughts full of anxiety or worry, that popped into my mind and kept me from sleep. It was a series of bizarre images, flashes of fruit, some grapes, flashes of other things I couldn't begin to remember. It was strange, but I'm sure I could've simply ignored it in the morning, if that were all that had happened. Instead, the bottom of my feet started to (I don't know how to describe it) itch, they began feeling extremely sore and just uncomfortable, as though I had run or jogged a couple of miles. You know that feeling your feet get after you've been walking far too long, a little sore, a little irritated, just enough to make you squirm at night when you're trying to fall asleep? Yeah, this was worse. The feeling increased. It almost felt like a small fire, a little burn, and it was spreading up through my foot. The sensation didn't rise higher than my ankle, but it was enough. I started noticing my breathing. So shallow, almost nonexistent, as though I kept forgetting to breathe, and only managed a little every now and then. My hands were by my face, and I could feel my heart. Yet, the problem was, what I felt wasn't much. My heart felt like it had slowed phenomenally, and not only was it beating slower, it was weaker. I could barely feel it at all. I pressed my fingers to my wrist, the side of my neck, the dip in the base of my neck, between my collarbones (because if you press your fingers there, you can feel your heart), held my hand over my heart in my chest. Barely anything responded, it was so weak, like my heart could hardly stand to beat that it was just attempting some feeble, faint echo of what it should. I started panicking, because those hallucinations I discussed earlier, they hadn't ceased. I'd close my eyes, but it would seem as if they weren't actually closed, like I had one eye still cracked open. I tried to breathe deeper, it was a little difficult. I sat up abruptly, my limbs shaking a bit. I looked around my dark room, shapes and shadows revealed to my accustomed eyes, and the first thing that came to mind, the first scrap of something resembling an actual thought in this entire experience, was 'I need C.' I was convinced, wholeheartedly, that he would be able to hold me, keep his hand on my heart, and tell me if it stopped beating, if I'd stopped breathing, so that I wouldn't have to watch for it myself, he would tell me so I could begin to live again, restart my heart, expand my lungs. I was convinced that everything would go away if he was there, that it would all be fine if he could only hold me. I was terrified to fall asleep now. I didn't know what to do. I climbed out of bed with that panicky kind of quickness, a little jerky, a little bit of stumbling. And I turned my light on as though I was certain I could catch someone in the act of hiding my sanity, my calm, my normality. No one was there, of course. I walked back and stood by my bed, restlessly trying to decide what to do, try to sleep, stay up the rest of the night. What to do? I was running my fingers through my hair, what little breathing I could manage was fast and slightly asthmatic, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to fall asleep with my light off, because what if the hallucinations came back? I didn't know if I should stay awake all night, because I would be tired as heck the rest of the day, and I would feel guilty, misplaced as that seems. I couldn't decide. I was fighting off tears. I was trying not to panic; I didn't realize that I already was. As the tears started streaming down my face, I rushed with a blind man's dexterity towards my door, the hallway, and my mother and sister's bedroom. Through my tears, the first I thing I said to them, as they wondered why I was intruding on their sleep, was "Feel my heartbeat." I was afraid it was going to stop. I was afraid it was going to slow down so much that it would disappear, and my chest would get tight, and I wouldn't be able to breathe, and I would die and not even know. No one would know, if it happened. So I rushed to them and gave them my wrist, first my mother, then my sister.

Panic attack. It is possible that that is all it was. A sensation or two that simply freaked me out. Was it a heart attack, in some vague way? I know when my feet started to burn, I was absolutely, thoroughly terrified that I would wake up paralyzed, that that was why my lungs didn't want to work, why my heart didn't want to beat, why it felt as if my legs were disappearing from sensation and I was just sinking into my mattress, every part of me disappearing except for that shallow beating and my fuzzy eyes, my panicky toes scrambling over my feet, trying to make that feeling disappear before I couldn't feel a thing anymore. I had to move my legs, with some difficulty, just to assure myself that they were still there. I jerked my body just to gain some knowledge that I hadn't vanished, that I wasn't simply a spirit experiencing the pains of an invisible body, like the pains soldiers experience when they lose an arm or a leg. The nerves remember what you'd like to forget. I had to make sure. Was I still alive? I was no longer sure.

I slept most of the night in their room (after much reassurances that my heart was still beating, even though I couldn't feel it at all), sharing my sister's bed, curled up (literally) in a quilt I had hastily pulled off my bed. It took forever for me to fall asleep, because I was convinced that my heart and breathing would stop while I slept, that I would never know. I was afraid that my sister would wake up next to a body and nothing more. I was tempted to get on the computer and write to C., perhaps catch him still awake. I didn't though. I went to the bathroom, and then crawled back into bed, and suddenly, it was almost like I could see again. There was no more fuzz, no more hallucinations, just the breathing of my sister and mother. And when I finally fell asleep, against my will and as still as possible, hardly breathing, still convinced that I wouldn't wake up at all, I slept hard.

Today, I'm tired, so tired. I don't want to go anywhere, yet I need to avoid thinking. This is my story, this was my night. I have to go get ready now.

Much hope.