Perhaps its all of the digital ink

The first time I experienced sleep paralysis occurred at 9am on a Sunday morning when I was 15. I was laying on a salmon colored couch. It was a bright day outside, but the blinders shaded the living room. I was suppose to take care of my cousin and I had arrived at 7am; my aunt left and I stayed in the living room. I dozed in and out of slumber, laying on that couch.

Across the couch is a window. The image of a shadow walks, as if dragging its amorphous shape, behinds the curtains. I try to get up, but I feel a heavy weight and my thoughts are warm with drowsiness. I'm still on the couch. I've just seen something bizarre, but I'm melting into pinkness and warmness, like a gooey substance into the pores between a grilled cheese. 
  
Suddenly, this black uncanny formless mass emerges from around the doorway and makes its way into the living room. And my rest becomes panic. Realizing that I'm experiencing a bizarre state of consciousness, I try screaming for help, but only the feeling of pressure on my chest from the swift glide of this thing has covered my whole body. My mouth moves and I feel my pipes vibrating but there aren't any words nor sounds forming. There's a laughter in a deep tone, "Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw" and every fiber in my body moves as if submerged in tar. I'm in a state of complete confusion: my vision blurs back and forth between varying shades of black as this mass pushes and pulls and laughs.

Still griped by the experience, I finally wake up yet remain motionless, trying to make sense of this senselessness. I hear crows outside and my skin tightens--"goosebumps" form on my arms.

I eventually get a grip on myself and go about the day; it was just a dream.

These episodes have reoccurred since that day, not as bad as the first time. Having become familiar with these experiences, I usually remain calm while, at other times, the clasp and squeeze in the absorption becomes nerve-racking. The laughter and the crows, however, has only repeated once.

This "phenomena" goes by various labels: sleep paralysis, night terror, or, as I've heard, "se te sube el muerto". The rationalization of this phenomena does not interest me so much; I'm concerned with meaning, and purpose. poor chap. These things can mean something or nothing. And of major significance is how one contextualizes the misery, joy, and absurdity of life into something that means anything, even if, as Camus suggests, it's all for nothing. Even if, as he suggests, life contains no meaning whatsoever and the only certainty is death. You didn't choose to live but you can certainly choose how to die; that is, of course, if fate doesn't cut your decisions short. Anything can happen at any given moment, yet the universe seems organized in its chaos. And, yeah...nothing means nothing.

So what do these reoccurring "paralyzed" states of consciousness mean? is there any purpose? I don't know. Sometimes I think they reflect the trauma I've absorb into the "subconscious", and other times I think these things are just nightmares. I don't know...perhaps its all of the digital ink coming back from the times I've deleted words that end with "-cide". 

"Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected."

-Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938).    

I guess this is me trying to modify and make the shadow conscious.