It’s five minutes before 0200 hrs and I’ve been up for almost an hour. Why? Nightmares. I have them almost every night due to the PTSD that I have. I take a medication that makes it so that they are not as bad and I don’t have as many as I otherwise would, thank goodness, but I still have some. They are themed around the traumatic events I’ve lived through, and I’ve lived through a lot. Too much, it seems, most of the time. There is no end to the permutations that the details of these themes go through in my head, but they always end in violence and blood and darkness, as did the traumatic events I went through. I wake up soaked in sweat, scared, and disoriented. What just happened?! Again?! So then I get up, do something to calm myself down, and eventually get tired again if the nightmare wasn’t too bad. Sometimes they are so bad that I just get up and that’s it. I run on fumes until the next night when I go to bed. Those days don’t usually turn out real well, but I get to where I dread sleep…I cringe at the idea of jumping right back into the nightmare.
Bad dreams happen, too. Bad dreams also stem from my waking hours’ experiences, but aren’t nearly as terrifying as the nightmares from the traumas. I sometimes have bad dreams trigger and turn into nightmares (as if the bad dream wasn’t scary enough). My mind is trying to fight to heal itself and my opinion is that this is one way that the brain processes those things. I don’t have to wonder whether or not that’s true. I know it is. Evidently, my “processor” seems to be damaged or something. Process stalled out.
CLIMBING 4 THE REST OF US 