My Migraine Battle: On The Forefront

Nightmares & Memories

Sometimes, instead of talking about what's really bothering me, I'll go off about something less significant and rant on that instead. Like the last time I blogged, it was about Hollywood. Well, I mean, that stuff does bug me, but not as much as it probably seemed to someone else who read it. If you read all that stuff, that way too long blog, you might've thought, Whoa, she's so ultra-anti-hollywood, or something like that.

The truth is that I get nightmares. Now, for a long time I was able to like, fight back in my nightmares against Evil and get myself out of the situation, or kick some Evil ass, etc. But, for the past several months, I'm back to being unable to fight back, like I was for most of my teen and adult life.

The fact is that I have been avoiding sleep for months now. I'll go 2-3 days without sleeping and then crash. Or I'll take some phenergan to knock myself out occasionally so I can sleep. When I don't take anything, which is most of the time, I end up with the nightmares and they're pretty bad, because alot of te time, they're not just nightmares, they're memories of something that really happened to me. It's like I'm transported back to that place, time and everything is the same. Same smells, sounds, sights, everything and it's so real, like it's really happening again. Living through it once was bad. But, now, I get to live through it over and over again. The monotany of the cycle, alone, is enough to make you nauseous, let alone the sequence of events.

At least I'm not beating up my dh, anymore, who once threatened to buy a cup just so he could sleep without fear. lmao! I'm laughing my butt off right now remembering that. I mean, it's not really funny, I guess, but yeah, it's funny in a sick way.

So, tonight, I'm awake again, because I don't want to go to sleep and dream. Dreams suck. Nightmares really suck. Being helpless in a nightmare sucks the worst. But, you know what's even worse than all that, is waking up from a nightmare and going back to sleep, only to have that same stupid nightmare all over again.

I wake up drenched in sweat, crying, panting, sometimes screaming. It's so...disconcerting, I guess. I dunno. Terrifying. No. It was terrifying at first, but I don't know if you can be terrified of something you're used to. It's like torture. You know it's coming, but you also know that no matter how you prepare yourself for it, it's still going to surprise you with it's magnitude and it's still going to completely fuck you over mentally, emotionally and physically. And then, when it does, you're surprised. Why is that? How can you be surprised by something that happens on a nightly basis. I bet POW's asked themselves that all the time, too. And after that, when you live through it, you don't know whether to be grateful you've lived through it, angry that you lived through it and are going to have to face it again, (wanting to yell, "Just finish me off already, would ya? Quit dinkin' around!"), or to start preparing yourself for the next time, or what.

How do you respond to the broken record of torture, or in my case, nightmares? Exactly. I don't know either. You just deal with it. You know it's gonna happen and no matter how you try to protect yourself, it will still happen, so you eventually just accept that fact, but that doesn't make it any easier to live with, you know?

So, now, I'm not going to bed until just a little while before my dh wakes up, most nights. That's not a good answer, not practical or useful and I really do need to get back to a normal, or at least a normal-for-me sleeping schedule, rather than this vampiric schedule I'm keeping. Until then, I'll keep avoiding what I really should talk about by blogging rants against The Man, The Machine, The Tool and whatever else I find to rant about in order to distract myself from the real issues that are bugging me. Hey, at least it's a plan.

(And now you know another of my secrets. This one makes two, right? You know two of my secrets. That's more than anyone learns about me in a lifetime. Even my dh only knows this one, and he doesn't know what it's all about, either. Weird. Strange compulsion to put it out there like that and yet I can't talk about it. But, there's a big difference between going through it, dealing with it, (or not) and speaking it out loud. It's like it takes on a life of it's own if you say it out loud. Have you ever noticed that before?)

posted by Jessica @ 3:58 AM