The Nightmares are back.

My nightly nightmares/night terrors ended September 20, 2008. There was a major life event in my family that occurred, and it was like someone flipped a switch in my head: Nightly Horrow Show = OFF.

It was not fixed by a pill, a ritual, therapy, controlled breathing, visualization, none of that. One of my major external influences changed, and apparently that made the ol’ amygdala calm down a little bit. Or something.

But tonight was night #4 of Nightmares & Disturbing Crap, and dammit, I’ve had enough of it. Nobody’s getting burned up or blown up, but it’s just shy of that. I wake up totally worn out and upset. I sit on the side of my bed trying to manually process them, "it was just a dream, it was just a dream, it isn’t real."

The "not real" part is a tough sell. My brain reallllly thinks…

it’s gotta be real — at least an element of it, in that psychic foreboding kinda way. It was just a dream I keep repeating to myself, rubbing my eyes, massaging forehead muscles that have been sore for days now, the subconscious tension squeezing my head in a constant never-easing vice. Just like the old days.

Oh hell, I don’t need to describe what they’re like, do I? When you’ve got The Nightmares, you know it. You know what they are.

They haven’t popped up out of the blue. I’ve been triggered. A firefighter was killed and 8 injured in an explosion downstate several days ago. I was already fragile due to the abnormally early arrival of my period, and ta-da, we had the Perfect Storm of body chemistry. The dumpster blew in St. Anna and the Shit cascaded in my head.

I’m craving carbs like crazy. Not like PMS-craving (any woman knows what that’s about, LOL) but brain chemistry craving… it’s like a brain drive. Sustenance, survival… not just "I want I want I want." I’m sleeping weird hours around-the-clock and exhausted all the time. When I wake from a 2-hr nap I feel good, and rested, then 35 minutes later I’m sinking into deep core tiredness and needing to sleep again. Somehow I can take 2- and 3-hr naps all day long and then go right back to sleep for the night at bedtime.

I’m obsessed with every movement outside my window, "who’s here? who’s here?" even though nobody’s here. Every blink of a headlight through the trees from the road makes my heart race. I stare. I watch. I hold my breath. Nobody comes after a couple of minutes so I let myself start to breathe again — really shallowly, so they can’t see me move. *sigh*

Tonight was a fun addition. Every time I slipped into REM sleep, I heard thunder. Really LOUD thunder, so loud it shakes the house & wakes me up, every time. FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. Oh, right… I did mention it’s a clear, bitterly cold moonlit January night in Wisconsin, right? The closest thunder is over 2,500 miles away. *snicker*

This time I just stayed awake, it was time to feed the cats anyway and obviously I wasn’t going to make any decent headway on the sleep front so long as my brain is stuck in Thunder Mode. (LOL!) But I am so tiiiiiirrrrrred……. what I would give for some real rest. *sigh*

I don’t know what the "answer" will be. I haven’t been triggered this bad since moving, and I think the only reason it isn’t worse is because of where I live now. (My new home is a "safe place," where my previous home was very much not safe. As in PTSD-safe, you guys know what I mean.) If I was living at the old place, I’d be a lump wadded up in a ball on the floor, rocking like a baby, glassy-eyed from the exhaustion of the constant panic, cowering from every little sound like a wild animal in the corner. Living in a safe place at least gives me some limited function, if only for the regular simple routines of the day, the mindless maintenance. The clock tells me what to do. As long as I don’t have to move much, I’m okay. I don’t have energy for much more than peeing or cooking noodles.

I am 3.5 yrs post-trauma. In some ways I have healed. When I’m not triggered, there are sweet, calm lights of hope shimmering through. But in other ways the injury is still a gaping lesion in my head that has only been covered by a very thin layer of skin. If something tears that skin open, there is the lesion again, festering and sensitive and sore and still very much broken underneath. It’s like the skin that gives the illusion of healing is just covering up what still lies broken underneath.

I have known this all along, I suppose, because I’ve backslid in recovery the last few months. The net gain has actually been a loss. But I am so wanting to be done with this already. I am so ready to move on, move forward. And then I get hit with a rough spot like this, and it’s all the more frustrating.

Despite my rational brain assuring me this is temporary, I don’t feel like it might be temporary. I fear that it’s permanent and I am back on the road of nightly night terrors with no end in sight — no end, because there was no magic pill, therapy, exercise, nothing I did to make them go away the first time. All I have is hope, prayer and faith. (And a person could reasonably argue I am pretty thin on those.)

Calm night music on now (Celtic Woman, Enya, and some piano solos by David Lanz and Wayne Gratz — the latter some favorites from happy college days 20 yrs ago) I’m going to roll over and try to catch a couple peaceful, recuperative hours of sleep………. ##

Filed under: Daily Life • Emotions

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