When My Soul Left the Room

I remember the exact moment my body betrayed me.

It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t painful.

It was quiet like a whisper caught in a thunderstorm.

I was lying in bed, the hum of the fan spinning above me, my hands resting gently across my chest. I had no fever, no illness, no reason to feel anything but ordinary. Yet something strange pressed against my chest—not weight, not fear, just… a shift.

First, my arms felt light, like they no longer belonged to me. Then my legs, drifting as though gravity had momentarily forgotten them. My eyes were still wide open, fixed on the ceiling, but the ceiling had already begun to fade.

I didn’t panic.

I floated.

Above me was me.

My body, small and still, curled into the bed like an afterthought.

But I was rising. Not upward in space, but inward, into a space I didn’t know existed. The edges of the room bled into color—soft pinks, deep reds, and that ever-consuming black, like a womb of nothingness welcoming me home.

There was no sound.

There was no time.

There was only awareness.

I could feel thoughts that weren’t mine brushing against me like strangers on a subway. Memories of people I never met, laughter I never laughed, regrets that weren’t mine. All of it swirling inside that red light, just beneath the silhouette of my own consciousness.

I didn’t ask to return.

But I did.

I woke up with a gasp, drenched in sweat, heart clawing against my ribs like a caged thing. The room was the same. The ceiling fan still hummed. My hands were back, fingers twitching with memory.

But something had changed.

Something didn’t come back.

Since that night, I feel like a shadow trailing behind a version of myself that never stopped floating. Conversations feel like echoes. My laughter feels rehearsed. I exist—but slightly to the left of where I should be.

They call it sleep paralysis.

They call it a dream.

They call it stress, trauma, even psychosis.

But I call it departure.

Because that night, I’m sure:

My soul left the room

and only most of it returned