Insomnia

I've written before about my nightmares.  I just woke up after having a nightmare, but today it was different.  I can't sleep, and it's shaken me up a lot.  There's no one here for hugs, so I guess I have nothing to do but write about it.

Sorry if this upsets you. It upset me.

This dream was about me having a child that I instinctively knew was mine, and I was chained in a cage, but the child (maybe 8 years old), was in the room.  I could tell we were underground, and there was a door that I somehow knew led to the stairs out, but it was as if the whole room was upside down (so the bottom of the door was lined up with the ceiling).

The room was filling with water, slowly, like one millimeter at a time.  This stupid child of mine was busy jumping around in puddles, not listening to me trying to teach him to swim.  It's weird how in dreams you just know things - I just knew the room was going to fill with water and I was going to drown, and unless I could teach this kid how to swim, he was going to drown too.  

Clearly, because kids are stupid, he had no idea what was going on, and despite the rapidly rising water (how it was rising rapidly at a millimeter at a time, I have no idea), he wouldn't listen to me trying to teach him to swim.  I remember thinking 'this is why all parents need to teach their kids how to swim, it would stop things like this!' - like that's the sort of thing that happens all the time.  

Anyway, I yelled and screamed and did my best to get his attention, then finally started trying to talk him through 5 years of swimming lessons, starting with floating.  By this stage, I was up to my chest in water, and it was freezing.  I was sort of like Rose from Titanic when she was lying on that door in the ocean.  Except, you know, I was chained in a cage, in a sinking room.  Anyway, somehow this child of mine was managing to float (why wasn't he standing on the top of my cage??), and I was trying to convince him not to be scared of the water.  He was crying and screaming and was clearly not comfortable in the water.

I was panicking too, and freezing, and was trying to force as much information into this kid as I could.  I ended up going under the water, but I was holding my breath and watching him struggle.  I remember thinking that I wished I couldn't hold my breath for 5 minutes, drowning in two minutes would be so much better than struggling and waiting to die for longer than that.

Every 3-4 minutes, a bubble would somehow float past me, and I would manage to breathe it just as I thought I was going to pass out.  In reality, this is impossible (believe me, I've tried), but anything's possible in a dream, I guess.  The room filled and the boy didn't get out.  I watched him struggle and drown, then finally be still and sink.  He landed face down, staring at me on top of my cage, with his eyes open.  As each bubble passed me, he moved a tiny bit, and I thought he was somehow alive.  After what seemed like forever, the bubbles of fresh air started getting smaller and smaller, and further apart.  Eventually, they stopped.

It's always been said that you can't die in a dream, but I die in my dreams without waking up all the time.  It's just how you'd imagine it, first, amazing peace.  After a few minutes of being dream-dead, every single memory I've ever had in my life came rushing back to me, slapping me in the face.  I remembered everything perfectly, and everything hurt.  I could relive all of the worst moments in my life, and somehow, this is what I was doing. 

Somewhere along these worst moments ever that I woke up.  I was up to when I was about 10 or 11 in my memories when I woke up, so I guess that shows how fast your brain can move when you're sleeping, huh?

Now I have every single one of those bad memories of my past as clear as anything in my head.  Every time I close my eyes, I see everything, from what I was wearing to what the weather was like.  It's much harder to deal with real life memories than it is to deal with not fully accurate nightmares like the one I wrote about last time. 

I guess the good thing about this is I know despite my recent memory loss, all of my memories are there, I just need to figure out how to access them.  The bad side is now I'm too scared to go back to sleep.  I don't want to remember.

Welcome to my nightmare

This blog post is about rape. If it's going to make you sad, please read about my angry work situation instead.

I mentioned last week that I have a recurring nightmare, and have had it for years. I woke up this morning, and couldn't get it out of my head. When I have days like this, it really sets me into a horrible headspace for the day, and I find myself scared of everyone, which really sucks.

I mentioned it on twitter this morning, and Cat suggested writing it down. I don't know why I've never thought of this before - I write everything else down, so why not a nightmare that I've struggled with for years? It seems like a no brainer; whenever else I write things down, it helps me to process whatever it is and either come up with a solution or move on, so why would the same not apply to this?

Anyway, I've had this nightmare for years and years, and each time, it's slightly different, just to keep me on my toes. The basic premise is that I'm being violently and physically raped. Before you say 'oh, but all rape is physical', realise that there's a difference between being held down and being kicked and punched and choked and thrown against walls. One of those I consider 'physical rape' the other, I consider 'rape'. Sorry, but it had to be said. You could also say that the physicality makes it violent, or that ALL rape is violent, but again, there's rape, then there's rape, then there's violent rape, where the rapist is totally out of control and crazy. Have you ever been so angry that when someone talks to you or even yells, you don't hear them because you're so caught up in your own world? That's sort of how I imagine the rapist is feeling.

Each time, I'm locked or otherwise restrained in a room. Last night it was in my own bedroom, which makes for horrific change. There's nothing like feeling unsafe in your own house. Despite the fact that I don't even have a lock on my door, I was somehow locked it with the rapist, and he had the only key to get out. There were bars on the windows (clearly, my room was somewhat modified; I am paranoid, but not enough to fit bars on my bedroom window!) and magic glass so no one could hear me. My bed has a headboard and footboard (is that what you call the thing that sticks up at the end of the bed?) and I was thrown, deliberately, broken shoulder down onto the footboard, then kicked into it again for good measure.

Before I started writing this, I didn't really think it would make me feel worse, but somehow it has.

Anyway. In my nightmare, I basically get hit until I'm on the ground and can't get up, then kicked in the stomach and choked until I stop fighting. Just to leave nothing to the imagination, when I'm choked, usually, it's a hand around the throat pushing me into the floor/bed/wall. It's about then in my nightmare that a feeling of overwhelming helplessness and desperation takes over, which is the feeling I wake up with.

That feeling, if you've had the good fortune to never experience it before, is very similar to the feeling you get when you're drowning. You know, just incase you've almost drowned and survived, but have never felt like your world has collapsed. For those of you who have not experienced either, for me, first, my eyesight goes - I can have my eyes open, but my vision gets more and more blurry, then finally black. After that, my lungs and chest start burning, and in my stomach, I feel like I'm being punched from the inside. My legs stop responding first, the finally, my arms refuse too. Everything burns, but is so, so cold. My lungs involuntarily try to breathe a few times, then they, too, give up. In real life, I would probably pass out at this point, only to wake up to being raped, but because nightmares are horrible, I stay conscious throughout the whole thing.

You'd think that after so many years of nightmares, I would be able to control what I'm doing and pretend to pass out or pretend not to fight to make it easier, but I'm not the sort of person to ever give up without a fight, even if it's in my best interests not to. I guess fear takes over.

The actual rape part is a lot less scary and horrible than the being attacked into submission part, even though in my nightmares, I'm always somehow or another being strangled, punched or otherwise hurt while the rape happens.

When I was younger and had these nightmares, I remember thinking during them that there's no way that you can die in a dream, it would be like those flying dreams where you fall, and just as you hit the ground, you wake up. I can attest to the fact that this is blatant lies; I have been killed in dreams and have watched my rapist attack my body after I'm dead. I think that gives me the greatest feeling of helplessness.

Sorry, I know this has got less and less readable and more of a jumbled mess, and I'm not sure whether I should post this or not. I guess any comments I get couldn't be worse than how I'm feeling right now, huh?

Maybe this whole writing it down thing will get easier with time. This time, it just made me cry and want to curl up somewhere safe and be alone, but for now, even my house isn't safe, so I guess I should go to work and be around other people.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Yeah, I know they're crappy lyrics, but that's exactly what I feel like.

Today was the 3rd day back at work after an amazing holiday in the sun, and reality is definitely setting in.

The whole time I was away, I slept pretty well, and came home feeling very rested.

For years now, I've had a recurring nightmare. The whole time I was away, I didn't have the nightmare once, and last night I had it again.

When it first started happening, it would fuck me up for a couple of days. When it started getting more and more regular, I started sleeping less because I was scared to sleep. That's how my insomnia developed. The problem with the nightmare is that sometimes I can't snap myself out of it and I get trapped within the nightmare. It's really annoying to me, because it's something I can't control. I like to be able to control everything in my life, and I can't do that when I'm sleeping.

Any tips on getting rid of nightmares? This has got to stop. Maybe that should be my new year's resolution.