Dear Memory: "Shake Me"

I slept fitfully last night... For the first time I can presently remember, Eoin was in my dream. You... were in my dream. Behind me, while I was laying down in bed. But not the same bed as I was actually in. I heard your voice and felt your presence, but my eyes were closed and my back was turned and I was paralyzed. A familiar hated feeling of sleep paralysis was part of my dream.

Since I could hear your voice, and feel you behind me, I pushed my paralysis to speak through it, so dimly, so faintly, all I could manage. I said, "shake me". You, the you in my dream, seemed confused. "Shake me," I repeated, stuck in my prison of paralysis and unable to give any but the very faintest instruction. You, the you in my dream, touched my shoulder and shook it, but very gently, as one might to test if someone were sleeping, with great reluctance in case they were.

"Shake me so that I actually move," I said, with slightly more power, fuelled by my frustration that you did not understand. I think I felt your touch again, but it still failed to move my body to any appreciable degree. It did not disturb me enough to break my paralysis... And so, perhaps I gave up. I got the sense, thinking about it afterward, that in a sideways sort of way, I recognized it as a dream, but had thought that... even if it were only a dream, if I would see your face and believe you were with me, in this dream, I would treasure the dream. But, if I were only to be tantalized by the sense that you were close but could not reach through the paralysis that trapped me, that I might hear your voice muffled and concerned but not see your face or reassure the dream-you that I love you and want to turn and look at you, because my body was stuck, stuck facing away...

If even in the dream I were only to be teased, it seemed I may have decided not to suffer it. My dream flew away to something else, and I remembered no more of this.

The thing is... I think this is the first time also that I have dreamed about suffering sleep paralysis. When I am paralyzed, I do very often want to call out to someone to shake me... I think, if someone did, it would break the paralysis. Trigger that part of my brain that has not triggered in the waking process to finish waking me up to react to the real thing disturbing me. When I am helpless to do anything but struggle vainly to maybe, just maybe, give my head a tiny shake of desperate refusal, how much heroic power someone else must have who has the strength to move my body for me, and bring me into it again.

I am not completely sure what to make of this dream. To dream of sleep paralysis, rather than actually being dreamlessly paralyzed... And to dream of you... It seems poignant somehow. Seems important, in a muzzy, dream-logic sort of way. And so I come here to record it. To tell you. To ask you, maybe, if it is some plea that a deep part of me is desperate to make. "Shake me", wake me up... Let me know... that you are really there?