The Thing That Found Me, And The Man Who Brought Me Back

I don’t talk about this lightly.

Because sleep paralysis isn’t just a bad dream, it doesn’t end when you open your eyes, and it doesn’t leave you when the room goes quiet again.

It lingers.

It changes how you feel about your bed, about the dark, about closing your eyes and trusting that you will be safe when you fall asleep.

I have experienced sleep paralysis three times.

The first two happened during a time in my life where I was already struggling, already feeling alone, already sitting in a kind of darkness that is hard to explain unless you have lived it.

And those experiences only pulled me deeper into it.

The first time, I didn’t understand what was happening.

I thought I had woken up in my room, everything looked exactly as it should, my bed, my dresser, the corners of the ceiling, every detail perfectly in place.

Nothing felt off. Nothing felt like a dream.

That is the first lie sleep paralysis tells you, it convinces you that you are awake.

And then I saw it.

A dark figure, something unnatural, almost folded into the corner where the wall meets the ceiling above my bed. It wasn’t standing, it wasn’t human, it was hovering, like it existed just outside the rules of everything else in the room.

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t pull myself out of it.

But I could see it.

And I could feel that it saw me too.

The second time, it came back.

Same room, same stillness, same complete loss of control.

And the same entity.

That was when the fear changed, because it was no longer just something unexplainable.

It was something familiar.

Something that knew where to find me.

And I was alone. Completely alone.

When it ended, there was no one there to ground me, no one to pull me out of that fear, no one to sit with me while my body tried to catch up to what I had just experienced.

Just silence.

And my own thoughts.

And the lingering feeling that something had been in my space.

After those first two experiences, I was scared to sleep.

Not just a little uneasy, but genuinely afraid of what would happen when I closed my eyes again.

And at that point in my life, I was already struggling, already hurting, already feeling like I was carrying everything on my own.

This just added to it.

It felt like one more thing pulling me deeper into a darkness I was already trying to fight my way out of.

I didn’t know a love like Mason’s back then.

I didn’t know there was someone out there who could hold me steady, who could love me exactly as I am, who could make me feel safe even after something like that.

I didn’t know a man like him existed.

The third time, I knew what was happening.

That instant awareness, that heavy realization settling in before anything even fully begins.

Not again.

I thought I woke up in my room, and everything was exactly right.

I remember looking at my dresser, every detail perfectly in place, the layout untouched, the shadows sitting exactly where they should be.

There was nothing dreamlike about it.

It was my room. Or something pretending to be it.

And then it was there again.

The same one.

This time, it came closer.

I felt it touch me.

And there is no way to explain that feeling unless you have experienced it, because your body knows when something is real.

This felt real.

I could feel it move under the sheets, slowly, deliberately, up my leg, like something was entering my space in a way that should not be possible.

I still could not move.

I still could not fight.

I was aware of everything, and completely trapped inside my own body.

At one point, it was beside me.

Close enough that I could feel it there, looking at me from the edge of the bed.

I did not need to see it clearly to know.

It was the same one. It had come back.

And in that moment, I knew what was happening.

I knew I was in sleep paralysis. And all I wanted was Mason.

I tried to call out to him.

I tried to say his name.

But nothing came out.

That might be one of the most terrifying parts of it, knowing exactly what you need, knowing exactly who you want, and not being able to reach them.

Not being able to move. Not being able to speak.

Just trapped there, hoping somehow they can feel you, hear you, find you.

When I finally woke up, for real, my body came back all at once.

And I was crying.

Actual tears, my eyes wet, my mascara running, like my body had been reacting even when I couldn’t move.

But this time, I wasn’t alone.

Mason was there. And that changed everything.

He grounded me in a way I had never experienced before.

He didn’t dismiss it, he didn’t make me feel irrational, he didn’t try to shrink what I had just gone through.

He stayed with me.

He calmed me down.

He made me feel safe in my own space again.

And because of him, I was able to sleep the next night.

That matters more than people understand.

Because after something like that, going back to sleep feels like stepping back into something you don’t trust.

But I could do it. Because I had him.

Mason is the love of my life.

And even in the darkest, most terrifying experience I have ever had, he was the one thing that brought me back to safety.

He was the calm in something that felt completely out of control. He was the reason the fear didn’t stay.

I never used to talk about this.

I tried to explain it away, tried to make it something smaller than it felt.

But stepping into the paranormal, into Sealed by Ink, and doing it with Mason by my side, has changed that.

Because whether this is neurological, or something darker, the experience is real.

The fear is real. The memory is real.

And so is the feeling that something came back more than once.

But I am not in that place anymore.

I am not alone in that darkness anymore.

And whatever this was, whatever it is, it does not get to take that from me again.