Dream to Sleep

I never remember falling asleep. Even though laws of sequence, cause and effect mandate that there must be a final conscious thought before the transition into a state of unawareness, it is never memorable. Perhaps memory collapses into sleep before the stream of consciousness follows suit, eliciting an ever-transient period of time (maybe minutes, maybe seconds) when you are still thinking, but not registering for later retrieval. What a disappointment to be laying awake, eyes closed and body curled, actively trying to fall asleep. As long as you’re trying, you know it’s not coming anytime soon. Try as you may to locate the moment when you feel yourself drift off into Neverland, if you are aware enough to feel the drift, you inadvertently break the sequence. Awake again.

When this process, falling asleep, works effortlessly, it is a magic. Lucky ones don’t realize this magic until waking in the morning—able to consciously appreciate that, though no memory of it exists, they must have fallen asleep.

But the process isn’t flawless.

Decades, centuries…millennia have passed with tortured, sleepless nights haunting the undeserved. Tossing. Turning. Counting sheep. Mumbling. Sighing. Stretching limbs. Shifting. Cursing. Midnight snacks.

And then what of dreaming? That mystical version of life that steals you away to a part of your subconscious you cannot control—finding your collapsed memory, taking hold of it, twisting it, shaping it, mangling it, ripping it to shreds so that only scraps of the story remain upon waking, if any at all. All while you lay lifeless, peaceful, still. The horrors, the happiness, the sorrows, the fantasies, seeming within reach but having no bearing on reality—presenting no threat to your existence—no risk of rejection, injury, or failure. Dreaming is fantastical—when you are asleep.


I was drifting…I could sense that. I was still in control of my body, though—still able to flutter my eyelids and let the world reenter, if I chose to do so. I assessed my comfort level, sighing into my pillow. My right cheek was warm against a crease in my blanket. My arms wrapped around a pillow, providing a sense of security I had grown to need. My toes tingled. My consciousness dispersed ever so slowly…

Present again. My hands were numb. They felt cold and lifeless, as if they had fallen asleep before the rest of me. Suddenly I was frightened. I was flipped on my other side without moving. My old roommate (now I lived alone) was crouched by the side of my bed, her head leaning in toward mine. Her face was dark but her eyes glowed. “You’re about to enter Hell!” she hissed. I strained to shake myself awake. My eyes were open. She was gone. A dream? She looked so real. I could almost touch her.

I was on my back, my hands at my sides, staring at the white ceiling. A faraway buzzing noise, like the hum of a beehive, located itself somewhere above me. A small yellow point of light appeared on my ceiling over the foot of my bed. It grew bigger. It swirled with color, orange, red, purple, green—it was soon the size of a basketball, round and tangible. It hovered high above my feet, the buzzing now more prominent. I stared in awe. Then it moved rapidly toward me, the buzzing growing louder as the blob got closer, changing its shape from round to flat and back again with fluid movement…like a drop of oil in a glass of water. Before I could shield myself it was on top of me, pressing on my chest, smothering me, pushing the life out of me. The buzzing was everywhere. A loud, explosive sound muting my thoughts. I struggled to push the blob off of me, but I couldn’t move my arms. They were plastered to my sides, as my legs were to the mattress. My head vibrated in paralyzed fear.

Suddenly it was gone. The room was empty. Silence. I used my hands to pull the blanket up to my chin. Despite my new ability to move, I was frozen with fear. I contemplated making a run for it—escaping whatever evil entity that was trying to steal me. I could slip into my suitemate’s room. Explain to her what had happened. What time was it, anyway?

I couldn’t get up if I wanted to. I stared at the spot on the ceiling where it had all began. Impossible. But so real. My eyes had been open. I had been looking at my room. It had all happened right in front of me.

And yet, my body had been rendered motionless. I remembered my hands. The numbness. As if they had fallen asleep before my mind had. Could it have been a dream? Could part of my mind have been asleep, while the other, the perceiver, the eyes, the ears, the nerves…remained awake? Present? Able to…remember?

I remained alert for what seemed like hours, lying still, afraid to close my eyes. Every few minutes I flexed my hands, refusing to let them surrender to fatigue. When the sunlight fell on the back of my eyelids in the morning and I woke in a new, more natural position, I knew I had fallen asleep. I couldn’t remember how…

As it was supposed to be.