Dream states are altered consciousness

and I know this

but the theory is immortalized as I slip into the abyss.

a white noise app fills the silence of the night. I pick familiar sounds to soothe my slumber-a crackling fire, a heavy rainstorm, roaring city streets. They envelop me in warmth and nostalgia.

I drift, closer to sleep.

As I approach it, the sounds contort and do not reflect their labels anymore. The crackling fire begins to sound like scratching in my walls. The rain is reminiscent of tv static. The city noises are no longer comforting; they remind me of being an overstimulated child, fearful of every corner.

It scares me. I cannot feel my body against the bed. I want to sit up and orient myself with the room, with the noises that don’t match their names.

Rain, rain, rain. I believe if I relay the label over and over in my head, the sound will take its regular form again.

It doesn’t.

I lie motionless, the incoherent clamour bouncing around my ears. I am probably in between full consciousness and sleep. And sounds don’t sound like sounds anymore and labels and laws don’t apply and I want to plug my ears.

and then.

I am hit with a sense of allowance, of acceptance. I am reminded that my brain is just readying for sleep. The regular, labeled sounds of the physical realm do not apply here.

And with that, my mind takes center stage. “Finally,” I’m sure it’s saying. I settle in.

The scratching and static are lullabies to me now. They rock me to my subconscious. The twisted sounds melt around my ears and soften my stay. They remind me that comfort and nostalgia will not cradle my head every night. My soul is tethered to a place without labels, without recognizable sounds. My drift into slumber is my anchor to the unknown, my reminder that my mind oozes through the cracks of consciousness every night, shape shifting beyond what I can perceive.

And what a mechanism to be witness of.