I don't even know where to start. My brain is still all "holy crap, really?" about this one.
I was drunk. Shocking, right? The kind of drunk where I could smell the alcohol seeping out of my pores already. I hadn't slept yet. Maybe I had, I don't know. The sheets on the surprisingly comfortable hotel bed were glaringly white. Afternoon sun poured through the open window. I thought hotel windows didn't open so people don't jump? But they were swung wide open, sea breeze tangled in the white curtains. I could smell the ocean. When I stumbled out of bed, a fine layer of sand seemed glued to me, mixing with my tequila sweat. Where was Paul?
I heard his voice then, coming from the other room in the suite. We had a suite? The lights in his room were on, I could see the four globes lined atop the mirror-sink hotel combo deal. You know, the counter where the coffee pot sits. Coffee. I was thirsty.
Paul was talking, saying something about the beach. Laughing. I couldn't see him, but his voice made me feel safe and less dizzy. A door slammed. Silence.
I thought the lights in the room were getting brighter, but it was really the sun dimming, sinking behind the hotel next to us, diving to meet the ocean. I flailed around in bed, my ankles bound in the seaweed sheets again. How did I get back here? Fuck. THIRSTY.
I made it into the hallway, determined to find Paul. Why did we even come here? I brushed the sand off my arms in the elevator. Paul told me once that he loved the beach but hated the sand. No kidding. It gets everywhere.
I tore through the lobby, shot into the restaurant only to be met with darkness. Heavy curtains kept the dazzling sunset at bay. Candles on the table made each place setting its own little barely lit bubble in the blackness. The brown and gold marble floor chilled my bare feet.
WHERE. THE FUCK. WAS PAUL. A waiter came rushing to me, asking if I needed to sit down or if I wanted water. He had a white linen napkin draped over his left arm, in his right he held a silver pitcher. I pushed him. Hard. He must have pushed back or maybe I was just that drunk but I started falling backwards and in that moment I panicked and screamed for Paul and in the same instant I realized I must be dreaming because Paul died in Afghanistan in 2010.
I waited to hit the floor and wake up. Nothing, just the sensation of falling. I think I fell for hours, thinking about the dream and Paul and how the curtains looked so real when I was lying on the bed and how I felt the slight pull in my belly from the elevator and how the sand made that gritty crunchy noise when it got caught between my teeth. I thought about old times with Paul, about the real life time we went to the beach one night. He told me then he hated sand. He told me the same thing before he deployed. I thought about lunch with him at school and going to watch his band play and being at Dan's house for practice and the time Eric got pushed in the pool and the way he would crack this shy smile that made me laugh uncontrollably. I thought about riding the bus with him and I thought about his twin brothers and I thought about the time we got kicked out of math class. I thought about how it got harder to stay in touch when he went to college, but not impossible. I thought about the last time I saw him, which was an accident, when we ran into each other at Target. I thought about our best friend secret and how we said we'd take it to our graves and how he did and now I'm waiting for my turn to keep that promise. Why hadn't I hit the floor yet?
Then I was awake, shrouded in darkness. Not the restaurant kind of darkness, but a thick, choking black nothingness that pressed on my eyelids. I felt the dream melt around the edges and evaporate the way they seem to do upon waking.
And then, terror. Sheer terror like nothing I have experienced before. The dream was gone and I was awake and the only thing I could feel were my eyelids, squeezed shut. I tried in vain to open them. In my head, I yelled for my arms or toes or anything to move. Nothing worked. I tried to force my eyes open by picturing the contents of my room, the color of the walls, the shape of the window, but all I could feel was the unrelenting heaviness.
I thought of Paul and of the white room and it occurred to me that I was already dead. I tried to suck in a deep breath, to prove somehow that I was still alive, but nothing happened. I can't think of words to describe the level of panic or fully convey the weight of that fear, so I am left saying simply this: there is nothing more frightening than being conscious and unable to move.
It was my ankle that twitched first. Then I became aware of my body, ankle on top of ankle, knee on top of knee, wrists tucked beneath my chin, left ear against the pillow. Feeling flooded back into me the way cold water hits your empty stomach.
Thirsty. My eyes shot open and I swear to you, I have never been so relieved in my life.
I usually try to wrap up blogs with some lesson to be learned or some take home moral or even some witty commentary on the human existence, but I don't have any of that this time.
Now I just think "Rest In Peace" is really strange thing to wish for the dead.
Maybe it's not for them. Maybe it's for us.
More about sleep paralysis.
The latest on Paul.
