Each night I get about four episodes of sleep paralysis and then lately I've had disturbing nightmares. I never used to get either so frequently but now the paralysis is nightly and the nightmares are at least once or twice a week. I've tried shifting my position, like not laying on my back as I've heard that can induce the paralysis but it didn't work. The only difference it makes is not being able to get out of it faster, feeling things/"people" touching my back, and then sometimes the nightmares. I don't know if other people have experienced this at all. Nights have always been hard for me with my mind not shutting off and insomnia but now I don't want my mind to shut off. I try to be a man about it and not get terrified as I see someone lurking in my door or feel things running up my arm. The only reprieve is knowing I can control, somewhat, my breathing (how fast or slow but not how shallow) and if I shut my eyes.

The nightmares are different though. I can't leave them until, it seems, some dies a horrible death. It seems centered around my past and friends I'm no longer associated with. I have no ill will towards any of them and sadly someone or someone they're presumably close to in my dream is being killed. Like, heads crushed in front of me then they walk back from the dead and tell me I did that to them or I come back to find animals painting with their blood, it's horrifying. Last night, someone was killed in my dream and I picked them up and set them on a table to I guess see if I could revive them. As I was going in to check for a pulse their eyes rolled back in their skull, their head turned 360 degrees, and they realigned broken vertebrae in their neck to make it "straight" again. Maybe I just chicken AF but I bolted out of bed and fixed myself a cup of coffee and said "nope, I don't need anymore sleep tonight."

I'm not really looking forward to going back to sleep tonight.