For years, it didn't have a name. Nobody could give it a name.

For years, I have been fighting the demons that came with 'it', all alone.

It must have started around the time I was about 7-8 years old. It starts with this numbness and the kind of drowsiness that you experience only when you are completely exhausted, or when you haven't slept for a long long time. You know it is coming but you can't stop it.

Your whole body then freezes, you can't even move a finger or a toe, and your breathing becomes more and more difficult. There's this awesome heaviness and some kind of pitch-black darkness all around. And it's at this exact moment/phase when the hallucinations start and you begin to see Things.

I have seen quite a lot of out-of-this-world scary things and shapeless frightening forms. Experiences that make me moan, scream and sometimes cry, in that world halfway between the real and the unreal. But I will never forget this little girl, about 5-6 years old in a white frock and with long curly black hair - the only one I have seen twice from that other world. The first time, she was hovering above me, above my bed, standing but hovering and then she screamed at me. The second time, she was sitting on my chest crying silently and beating my chest with her two small fists. I will never know who she is. Someone from my past life, if there is ever one? Someone out there in this real world, waiting for me? But to be very honest, I don't wanna know, I don't wanna know at all.

I had the worst and most frequent of these experiences when I was in my early teens. I once stopped breathing; I could sense my sister in the same room but couldn't make a sound. After struggling to breathe for sometime I gave up, and that's when the lightness came. I remember a floating sensation for some seconds or milli-seconds, and the next moment I wake up gasping like someone who came up to the surface after a long time under the water.

It doesn’t happen that frequently nowadays but it still comes back. And I have learned a lot. I have learned that its name is Sleep Paralysis and that there is no cure for it. I have learned to stop its visits as much as I can. I have learned to control my breathing to save each precious breath when the heaviness & suffocation sets in. I have learned to shut out my 'mental eye' when that darkness arrives. Coz' if I do that, I don't see the Things and scream, or panic. I have also learned that it will never leave me and it will always be a part of my life.

4 near-death experiences of unconsciousness & floating before my 30th year, and just one from 'It' or Sleep Paralysis - I guess I'm gonna be all right. And I will keep on fighting 'coz I have no other choice. And I will keep on fighting 'coz I'll never let that darkness eclipse all the beautiful moments in my life.