So, maybe some of you jumped into this blog from my last link on Facebook, and maybe some of you are confused as to what's going on here. About 10 years ago, I experienced a trigger event that began a major depressive episode that lasted for at least two years. It changed me in some fundamental ways, and the recovery process was slow and difficult. I've decided to blog about it--my experience might help someone else, and I think writing about it will help me--even though the blogging process is also slow and difficult. There you go.
Out of the infinite kindness of my heart, here are the previous posts (in order) that will get you caught up:
Brave or Stupid?
Sick or Hungry? (Part 1)
Sick or Hungry? (Part 2) (warning: vomit!)
Sick or Hungry? (Part 3) (WARNING: may contain eating disorder triggers)
Trying to write about the nightmares
Nightmares (part 1) (background)
It's been hard to relive some of these things, and that's one of the reasons I don't post regularly. 10 years later, I'm fine. I have some lingering issues (mostly with food and phobias) but overall, I'm great. My life is incredibly blessed and I'm very happy. I know who I am and I sometimes get glimpses of why I'm here--I don't know if I could ask for much more than that.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Nightmares (Part 1: Background)
As I've been writing, I've realized that I need to break this subject up or it will be too long and difficult for me, so the nightmare posts will be published in several parts.
I thought the food issues were difficult to talk about. This one might be worse. I’ve put it off for months, but here goes.
Two weeks ago I had a really bad dream about a worm that got into you if someone who already had it bit you. We were on a spaceship, and two women had the worms. I had to help in the medical bay, but while I was watching, one woman started flailing around because the worms were multiplying and moving under her skin. Suddenly, while the doctor was trying to help the second woman, the first woman’s skin stopped moving and she grew very still and opened her eyes. Her eyes became reddish black and I knew that the worms had eaten her brain but couldn’t move in time to prevent her attacking the doctor. Then I woke up. It was bad. It was bad enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep without turning on my lamp, the bathroom light, and the light over the kitchen sink to make sure there weren’t zombie-like people in my house, waiting to infect me with a brain-eating worm. I know I'm not the only person to ever have vivid dreams, but MAN. Right after waking up, I knew that if I didn't turn on the lights, I'd be next.
Useful background points:
Sometimes things really get to me, and sometimes they don’t. I can spook easily, depending on the nature of the spooking--a documentary about Charles Manson can spook me more than a ghost story before bed, for instance, unless the ghost story is about demons or possession, but I like some scary movies and am usually ok and rarely have nightmares after watching one. I’ve watched some pretty scary (and really well-made) foreign horror films and, while I may get a little nervous in elevators (thanks to the original “The Eye”, not to mention “The Silence of the Lambs”), I’m usually just fine once I get home.
I remember, vividly, the very first nightmare I ever had. I was three, and mean people were my parents and made me sleep in a closet, and I had to find my real parents, but got lost in a big warehouse full of strange people. A very fat man with a red and white polka-dot tie helped me find my real parents. His “house” inside the warehouse was a sink and he sat in the sink and told me not to worry.
I had another one around the same age (I think) in the back of my dad’s sleeper cab semi. My little brother and parents and I were all sleeping there during a drive my dad took (my middle sister might have been born, but I don’t remember her being there). I woke up because there was someone else, with a blue face, in the bed. The person turned around, and instead of the back of her head, there was a red face just like the blue one. When I had chicken pox for the second time (again, around 3), I had bad dreams that there were spiders crawling all over me--oddly enough, I remember being completely unafraid of spiders before that dream, and since then I’ve been terrified of them. I had a dream while spending the weekend at my grandparents' house that my grandpa's big black and silver angel fish got out of the fish tank, swam through the air, and touched me (more on this when I talk about the weird phobias in a different post). When I was in junior high, I dreamed about a wild man who came down from the mountains, took people from their beds, ripped them apart, and then felt bad about what he had done. He would put the people back together wrong and leave them on their front porches in the night. I’ve had some pretty bad dreams that have stuck with me for a long time, and sometimes I remember them just as I'm falling asleep.
I dream in full color. Almost Technicolor. The non-color dreams I’ve had have always been sepia-toned or turned into color eventually. So blood, for instance, is REALLY red, and fire is REALLY fiery, and if I shoot a gun, I can almost feel the bruise on my shoulder the next day.
I’m afraid of the dark and have been since I was a child. I can’t sleep without a light on unless there is someone else in the room. Sometimes a tiny nightlight is enough, and sometimes I have to have my bedside lamp AND the hall light on. It’s just one of those things I deal with.
I have a pretty vivid imagination and things that don’t frighten me in the daytime come out at night, so, as interesting as they can be, I avoid TV shows about ghosts and hauntings. I have a healthy respect for the power of darkness and I don’t mess around with it--it’s one of the lines I draw with scary movies and the main reason I will never see “The Exorcist”.
So, you know, take a woman who has all of these factors already stacked against her, and add a major depressive episode and sleep deprivation (coming in Part 2) to the mix, and it's really no wonder that, at some point, she'll develop a phobia of sleeping.
Two weeks ago I had a really bad dream about a worm that got into you if someone who already had it bit you. We were on a spaceship, and two women had the worms. I had to help in the medical bay, but while I was watching, one woman started flailing around because the worms were multiplying and moving under her skin. Suddenly, while the doctor was trying to help the second woman, the first woman’s skin stopped moving and she grew very still and opened her eyes. Her eyes became reddish black and I knew that the worms had eaten her brain but couldn’t move in time to prevent her attacking the doctor. Then I woke up. It was bad. It was bad enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep without turning on my lamp, the bathroom light, and the light over the kitchen sink to make sure there weren’t zombie-like people in my house, waiting to infect me with a brain-eating worm. I know I'm not the only person to ever have vivid dreams, but MAN. Right after waking up, I knew that if I didn't turn on the lights, I'd be next.
Useful background points:
Sometimes things really get to me, and sometimes they don’t. I can spook easily, depending on the nature of the spooking--a documentary about Charles Manson can spook me more than a ghost story before bed, for instance, unless the ghost story is about demons or possession, but I like some scary movies and am usually ok and rarely have nightmares after watching one. I’ve watched some pretty scary (and really well-made) foreign horror films and, while I may get a little nervous in elevators (thanks to the original “The Eye”, not to mention “The Silence of the Lambs”), I’m usually just fine once I get home.
I remember, vividly, the very first nightmare I ever had. I was three, and mean people were my parents and made me sleep in a closet, and I had to find my real parents, but got lost in a big warehouse full of strange people. A very fat man with a red and white polka-dot tie helped me find my real parents. His “house” inside the warehouse was a sink and he sat in the sink and told me not to worry.
I had another one around the same age (I think) in the back of my dad’s sleeper cab semi. My little brother and parents and I were all sleeping there during a drive my dad took (my middle sister might have been born, but I don’t remember her being there). I woke up because there was someone else, with a blue face, in the bed. The person turned around, and instead of the back of her head, there was a red face just like the blue one. When I had chicken pox for the second time (again, around 3), I had bad dreams that there were spiders crawling all over me--oddly enough, I remember being completely unafraid of spiders before that dream, and since then I’ve been terrified of them. I had a dream while spending the weekend at my grandparents' house that my grandpa's big black and silver angel fish got out of the fish tank, swam through the air, and touched me (more on this when I talk about the weird phobias in a different post). When I was in junior high, I dreamed about a wild man who came down from the mountains, took people from their beds, ripped them apart, and then felt bad about what he had done. He would put the people back together wrong and leave them on their front porches in the night. I’ve had some pretty bad dreams that have stuck with me for a long time, and sometimes I remember them just as I'm falling asleep.
I dream in full color. Almost Technicolor. The non-color dreams I’ve had have always been sepia-toned or turned into color eventually. So blood, for instance, is REALLY red, and fire is REALLY fiery, and if I shoot a gun, I can almost feel the bruise on my shoulder the next day.
I’m afraid of the dark and have been since I was a child. I can’t sleep without a light on unless there is someone else in the room. Sometimes a tiny nightlight is enough, and sometimes I have to have my bedside lamp AND the hall light on. It’s just one of those things I deal with.
I have a pretty vivid imagination and things that don’t frighten me in the daytime come out at night, so, as interesting as they can be, I avoid TV shows about ghosts and hauntings. I have a healthy respect for the power of darkness and I don’t mess around with it--it’s one of the lines I draw with scary movies and the main reason I will never see “The Exorcist”.
So, you know, take a woman who has all of these factors already stacked against her, and add a major depressive episode and sleep deprivation (coming in Part 2) to the mix, and it's really no wonder that, at some point, she'll develop a phobia of sleeping.
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