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Nighttime, when the day light slowly slips away and leaves you in total darkness. Not unlike our lives, the life slipping away from us with every tick of the clock. For some they face the unknown darkness, and for others it is the promise of a different kind of day. A day when you really won’t make mistakes and you will be loved in an unimaginable way. A way we are loved now, but don’t always feel it.
Nighttime, when the shadows come out and the fear with them. Sometimes it is a game of “This Is Your Life” and you relive things you would rather forget. Yet every night the same re-run plays. It is because of the OCD. Obsessive thoughts brought about by extreme anxiety, which gets triggered by my C-PTSD, which was caused by abuse that many times I would call torture.
The night and the shadows scare me. The re-runs terrify me. They haunt me constantly and I want to find the off switch. Perhaps it will take until the day I stand before my Saviour for him to reach in and switch it off. I don’t know. I do know that I have taken every course, therapy, self-help, prayer, and then some to get rid of it. Exercise, medications, and diet but yet it remains. I have been informed many times that it will likely not go away. I will improve but not get better. The PTSD will remain and as I get into the emotional parts of my injuries it will become harder. What could possibly be harder? Those words scare the bones out of my flesh and leave me a bowl of jelly on the floor. Harder? I don’t know if I have any more “harder” in me.
Nighttime. Quiet. Peaceful. A time of rest. I lie in bed, still; and thoughts race around like a tornado in my brain. For hours I try to still them, but they come faster than I can pack them away. Like Lucy trying to pack chocolates on a conveyor belt. They come too fast and overwhelm me. Tears flow, my heart feels like it will either pop out of my chest or stop beating. I want a hug and to be held but I don’t want to upset and concern my husband who has his own heart trouble. This is not his battle, it is mine. He gets enough of the collateral damage of my life.
When I become exhausted, usually as the light starts to come up I start to drop off. That very moment when you cross that conscious state from being awake to sleep, everything in my body jumps. My arms, legs, and heart and I wake up with the fear that I am about to die or am dying. I have to bite my tongue not to scream. My MNM used to send me to bed and tell me to think of a good reason why she shouldn’t kill me in the morning since I was of no use to anyone. Give her a reason why I should live. I would lie in bed and think and all I could think of was all the bad things she told me and I knew that tomorrow I would die. That is what I believed. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know any good in me that I could tell her. I would cry and eventually fall asleep. Then I would suddenly and shockingly be yanked out bed by my hair with her screaming at me that I obviously didn’t want to live. I would cry and beg her “Yes I do mommy, Yes, I want to live, please don’t hurt me, please mommy don’t hurt me!” She would shout at me and slap me and yell at me “Liar! You are such a liar! If you really wanted to live you would be thinking of a reason. Instead you are sleeping. You obviously don’t care. If YOU don’t care, why should I?” This conversation, if you can call it that; would go on for what seemed forever, with her slapping me, pulling my hair, and asking these crazy double bind questions that would get me in trouble no matter what I answered.
“If you wanted you live you wouldn’t be sleeping.”
- yes, I want to live
“Then why are you sleeping. It must be that you don’t care or you don’t give a s*** about me?
I care, I just fell asleep.
“So you care, then you don’t give a s*** about me! You should be proud of yourself. How can you say that to your mother!”
I do care. I love you.
“If you cared about me, if you loved me, you would listen to what I ask you. I asked you to stay awake and think of a reason why you should live and you couldn’t even do that. Why should I care about your life if you don’t? Huh? Tell me!”
Mom, I just got tired and fell asleep. I don’t know why. I tried really hard.
Well, you obviously didn’t try hard enough. If you don’t care, I don’t care. You don’t care s*** about me since you couldn’t do one simple thing I asked you, so why should I care about you. Get back into bed and you know what will happen in the morning. And shut the f*** up or I’ll do it now. The choice is yours. What do you want? Now or in the morning.
The double bind questions kept coming. I didn't know what was real, or unreal. Day after day. Unrelenting. Fear. Confusion. Totally Controlled. Gail Meyer wrote a great article on double-binds.
These are the memories that come in my sleep. Sometimes I do fall asleep, deeply; and will wake up screaming, and in absolute terror. I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t called the police. My honey grabs and holds me and then I wake up and know where I am. I’m good. I can fall right back to sleep exhausted, but the house is in an uproar. These emotions are the ones I need to look at and they scare the spit out of me.
Last therapy I learned an interesting thing, and a very frightening one. It is the next door on the road. The emotional one. When I talk about my past I dissociate. I try very hard to be in the present but I go up to the right corner of the room. The left brain apparently controls cognitive thought, so by looking to the right I can access that memory vocally. The therapist mentioned that I always look to the left, but asked where “I” was. She said that my thought were there (where I looked) but where was I? I know that sounds all very freaky and strange but it eventually made sense. I stopped and thought about it, because I always thought that was where I was. Slowly the realization came that I was in the other corner. Laurel asked me if I could look at her and my heart stopped and my tears came. I had no voice. I put my hand up to block my vision from that corner of the room and turned my head completely away.
Later I tried to turn that way, but my hand stayed to block my vision and I shook, and swallowed and blinked back the tears that came faster than I could stop them. For the rest of that session I kept my left hand up blocking my vision from the left side of the room.
My therapist told me that the left brain contains the emotions, and the emotional me, with all the buried emotions was in the corner on the left. The thought of looking at her terrifies me. I have tried a number of times and I am awash in tears, fear, panic, and things I know I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to go there. I don’t know if I can do it. It was so hard to live it that I don’t know if I can or are willing to relive it. I am really struggling with this part, but I do know I will go forward. Only because God is on my side.
If God brings you to it, he Will bring you through it.
Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.
And tomorrow will be another day in God’s kingdom. Either my temporary home or my permanent home. Either way, I am a winner.
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