Is it a Nightmare, a Dream within a Dream, or a Ghost?
Around 4 PM, I suddenly jolted awake. The confinement on my body abruptly released, my chest heaving violently as I greedily gasped for fresh air. Looking back at my sleeping child, I'm still here. How wonderful. The earlier events and scenes in the dream were very chaotic, so I'll just get straight to the point. I usually take a nap with my child in the afternoon. This was my first episode of sleep paralysis since last summer. Originally, my husband was sleeping with us too, but he got up to work overtime. I only heard him get up; I didn't hear him close the front door, so I assumed he was working in the living room. My dream-self thought so too. That's why I kept calling out for my husband outside. The Dream: I woke up, only to find my nightmare-bound body paralyzed on the bed, unable to move. First attempt to save myself: I tried hard to raise my hands and wave them in the air, attempting to wake my suppressed, immobilized body. The extended arm was transparent, like an ethereal soul. I felt I had exhausted all my strength, yet it was futile. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed my actual elbow still bent and resting on the pillow, knowing I was still controlled by the nightmare. Second attempt: I realized that waving vigorously to wake myself didn't work, so I started slapping my own face with that transparent hand. But it was still useless. Then I stuck my fingers into my mouth and started biting myself, trying to use pain to wake up. No matter how hard my mouth worked, my teeth couldn't clench together; they merely brushed shallowly against my fingers. No matter how hard I bit, it felt like gnawing on a piece of rubber. My cheeks ached from the exertion, but my fingers felt no pain at all. I started stacking two fingers together, trying to use the thickness to increase my bite force, but no matter what I did, it still felt like biting rubber (PS: the feeling of biting rubber also appeared in my sleep paralysis last summer). After failing to wake my nightmare-self, I started crying out for help to my husband in the living room. Third attempt (calling for help): When I found that pain couldn't break me out of the nightmare, I pinned my hopes on my husband working in the living room. I tried calling his name: Jia Ge~ Jia Ge~ I used all my strength for every shout, but the voice that came out was incredibly weak, as if only I could hear it. When I started seeking help from the outside, the power of my nightmare began to grow furious. Some characters started appearing above my head, things that looked like Bagua trigrams but with a few extra lines. My dream-self secretly told me to remember these characters and patterns to have someone look at them later. (I couldn't remember them upon waking). I started to panic, struggling to sit up, my calls growing more urgent. My husband in the living room heard some noise and was about to come open the door, but the door wouldn't open. I began calling out almost frantically to Jia Ge standing at the door. Jia Ge~ Jia Ge~ The voice I let out suddenly wasn't my own; it was incredibly eerie, like the voice of the Yinshi King. Hearing the strange voice, Jia Ge wanted to open the door, but he just couldn't. I started to struggle; I wanted to open the door myself. I struggled to get up again and again, and finally, it was no longer a transparent soul rising. I rolled off the bed, dragging the blanket with me. I wanted to crawl forward. It was clearly only a distance of one or two meters, but I just couldn't make it across. Every time I crawled forward, grabbed the edge of the wardrobe to pull myself toward the door, I was dragged back. After several attempts, I was dragged back onto the bed. That force seemed to fly into a rage out of humiliation. Unable to control me, it decided to kill me. My blanket started moving on its own to cover my nose and mouth. I struggled, suffocating, desperately screaming for help. Help~ Just as I was thinking I didn't want to die, that I still had my child, yet found myself utterly helpless, at the final moment on the verge of suffocation... I finally truly woke up from the dream. The tightly gripped heart released, and the heavy mountain on my body was moved away. My waking posture was exactly the same as the posture of my physical body lying on the bed that my transparent shell had seen when it left my body. Knowing it was sleep paralysis, I was so glad none of it was real, but that realistic sensation made my scalp tingle. I got up to see if my husband was working overtime at home, but he wasn't; he had gone to the office. There was a scene in the dream where my husband came in to check on the child and wanted to cover him with the blanket. I said there was no need, it was very hot. Then he closed the door and left. I don't know if that was real or part of the dream; I'll ask him when he gets back.
