My panting chest ached under the pounding of my heart. The lactic acid burning holes in my quads as I sprinted from the black figures hastily approaching me. I knew I was going to die. The black figures were going to kill me, but I hadn't done anything wrong. This whole scenario was a fallacy, and suddenly I knew I was asleep. I had entered into a place between sleep and consciousness but was terrified, still. I urgently but calmly told myself to wake. My eyelids slowly opening to reveal my bent arm pressing into the pillow next to my head. I could feel my heavy body, but all of my limbs were numb. This is what my dead body will feel like.

I had entered back into a mindful state but my body was still in delusion. I tried to scream for help but audible noise and mandible movement was a no-go. Am I actually dead?

My mind was playing tricks on me. Some sort of undiagnosed, undiscovered mental illness. How was I this detached from reality, my mind trapped in a living, breathing corpse. Willing my arm to move and my voice to sound, I realized I had left a lucid dream into a nightmarish reality, drowning my senses in a panic that only true wakeful reality can evoke. Just as I had plundered into the darkest depths of loneliness and despair, I came back. My arm moved and I lifted my head experiencing a freedom that triumphed all freedoms ever experienced in prior dreams.

To this day I have no idea what happened, but will never forget the terror of that one lucid dream.

A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes.

I screamed aloud as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind.

The stars the moon they have all been blown out.

You've left me in the dark.

No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight.

In the shadow of your heart.

-Florence and the Machine