it’s been years, I realize, since I’ve had sleep paralysis, and it always (almost always, but probably always) came after nightmares of violated boundaries and the man who didn’t care what happened to me and even though I’ve had those dreams on occasion since (see: the night after the most traumatizing medical exam of my life that involved blood, an enormous plastic speculum, and what felt like a catapult stealing away tissues inside—which, to be very clear, doesn’t even make any sense as a metaphor… or a sensation… or a reality, for that matter) and the part of me that uses humor to cope almost named this Do Traumatized Girls Dream of Electric Sleep Demons? because so much of my toolbox for day-to-day living feels like a trauma response—it wouldn’t shock me if sleep paralysis was one, too, and the dark humor definitely is—and, as it turns out, because I’m like a dog with a bone: tons of websites (the NIH, the NHS) list studies and articles about the correlation of PTSD (check) and anxiety (check) with sleep paralysis, and the Journal of Anxiety Disorders even published one⁽¹⁾ about a connection to childhood sexual abuse specifically, and all over again it feels like I’m just a collection of coping mechanisms in a trench coat masquerading as an adult (even though I know that I’m more than my trauma, but knowing isn’t feeling), but then it’s been years, I realize, since I’ve had sleep paralysis

⁽¹⁾ McNally, Richard and Susan A. Clancy. “Sleep paralysis in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol. 19, no. 5, 2005, pp. 595-602.