What Is Sleep Paralysis?

Sasha is already snoring as Sara sips a mug of black coffee. They fought that night, after dinner with a few old friends from high school. Mutual feelings of stagnation and inadequacy made them both unsure of where their relationship was heading. Sara sat in the kitchen sulking in anger with a lit cigarette between her fingers. Sasha did not like when Sara smoked inside their apartment. This was a protest. She didn’t know what it meant yet, but she knew he could smell the burning nicotine scent linger in the house and that is what she wanted. It was a rule in her head that anytime she was bent by unruly rage during the day or that night, she would almost surely slip into another bout of sleep paralysis. It was like a profane self-punishment

The event of paralysis during sleep is akin to how the mind tries to deal with experiences of extreme trauma only instead of veiling said trauma, the brain attempts to explain it in the best way it knows how. The mind tries to understand an event that it only half comprehends. The narrative is untrustworthy because we know of reality and yet the rules have changed in the world of sleep. It links to cultural understandings as well which is why sleep paralysis has so many varied names and identities among separate societies. The narrative does not secure nor assure the human instinct to survive. The brain’s makes doubt into a story conjured from necessity and yet still, there is fear. Logic can apparently only do so much. Just as dreams do, in all of their odd ambiguity, sleep paralysis may be an event that helps solve problems, integrate memories and process emotions. A drowsy, subconscious scavenge for life’s puzzle pieces. Only then do we have to endure the struggle of piecing them all together to achieve some semblance of coherency. Though one wonders what happens when those pieces only swell doubt and thus encourage fear even through a narrative we can grasp. The brain seems to latch onto our fear as a translator, filtering through triggers of distress. It is very seldom that the human mind can release itself fully from fear without great effort. And it is too often that the product of that fear is