Is this really happening?

The following is a true story.

I am lying in bed and am suddenly aware of a loud, incessant noise penetrating my ear drums. It is as if someone is trimming the lawn inside my brain. The noise wakes me, but I can’t seem to shake it, even after I realize I am awake. It is omnipresent. I try to get out of bed, hoping that will stop it, but my body will not cooperate with my desire.

It is a struggle to get myself upright. Rather than roll out of bed as I normally would, I find myself standing on my bed in order to simply sit down again on its edge. Only now do I begin to realize that, aside from the noise—which seems to be only getting stronger now—my head is spinning. My vision is like those videos with the body-affixed cameras. Everything seems wobbly, distorted and exaggerated.

I find my way to a seated position, but only momentarily. I grab a bottle of water from beside my bed and hope to shake the noise and delirium with some liquid. Except every time I tilt my head back and pour, nothing comes out of this nearly full bottle in my hands. I wonder if my perception of the tilt of the bottle is off, and I’m not really pouring at all. I get just a bit of water down and the grinding noise wanes for a moment.

Standing, I turn around to face the window. The horizon is vast; the vista vaguely resembles that of my old bedroom window, except I can see water. As the lawn edge trimmer/table saw noise dissipates, I am now keenly aware of my breathing. It is loud and visceral, like an asthma attack, though I do not consider myself short of breath. I am more worried about what I see outside: for when I breathe in and out, the view changes. As I suck air into my lungs, the night sky rapidly sucks in light, as if I were seeing an accelerated sunrise. Yet when I breathe out again, seconds later, all the light escapes and it is once again night.

The noise begins again, and I start to question whether or not I really am awake. I am suddenly resolved to exit the room, with the idea that I might go turn on the TV in the living room, in the hopes that will change my state and either stop the noise, wake me up, or both.

I try to drink some more water, to no avail. Still standing, I turn and try to walk out the door of my bedroom, the wobbly-ness causes imbalance, and I am forced to hold myself up, left hand rested on the door jam. I feel confused and somewhat hopeless that I won’t find a way out of this situation. And then I think real hard about making it all stop—the noise, the dizziness, the fear—and then I wake up. My room is just as it was: it is dark, there’s a bottle of water by my bed… but I am lying where I was when the noise began. Eyes open, I turn on the light to realize less than 30 minutes have passed since I fell asleep. I gather my wits and immediately call it: Craziest. Dream. Ever.