4.8

Have you ever had your limb go numb while you're sleeping--maybe you're laying on it funny and it just goes absolutely dead? I have gone to sleep on my stomach and woken with both arms like they were some corpse's, and Dr. Frankenstein had sewed these useless replacements to where my old limbs had been. I have woken on my back in a state of total sleep paralysis, a fear induced by a spiderbite in a dream, a complete inability for brain to excite even spastic movement in a finger or toe. Frustration is not the paralysis. It is the terror that every neuron is bent to this one task, to move a finger, and your entire machinery has commanded your brain, your central control, your very self: no. I will not move. You are left with only the fear that you will never again have control over even the very basic functions of life and that everything you do will be countermanded by your body. That fear and loathing is what frustration feels like. That's what it feels like when the whole world bears its terrible weight down on your will and snaps it like antique glass--not at all, then all at once and terrible and completely.