Twenty-Four
The very first melancholy episode I can remember experiencing occurred when I was ten. It was a simple moment of darkness, of feeling inexplicably down. Given it arrived with little surprise, things must’ve been happening earlier that normalised this for me, although I don’t recall anything specific. These episodes got worse through my teens, along with periods of agitation, punctuated by the occasional manic burst of energy. But I learned to mask it all as best as I could, although that wasn’t always easy. These things made it hard to fit in, hard to connect, hard to be like everybody else. Everything was an act. I looked like one of…
Twenty-Three
About ten years ago, I woke and was unable to move. I knew immediately I was caught in an episode of sleep paralysis. There was no sense of what time it was, the way there is usually when you wake unexpectedly. The room should’ve been dark, but it wasn’t; it was dim, but had a sepia tint. I felt something to my right – a concentration of unrivalled malevolence that I knew was watching me. Every panic attack I’d ever had, the fear of recovery after the car had hit me, the dread of awaiting test results when they’d initially thought my digestive issues were going to be much more…