Nightmares (Part 2: Sleep Deprivation)

On to the Year From Hell.

First, I’ll talk about sleep deprivation.  In January of 2002 I was living in my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Springville in kind of an extended house-sitting arrangement.  My housemate and I shared the main floor, and the basement was rented to two college guys; Zach would continue to be the landlord while he and Kathleen were in Ohio, and I had planned to live there for at least the next 5 years.  In the meantime, I was paying half the rent and the Basement Boys, as I called them, paid the other half.  Unfortunately, soon after my brother and sister-in-law left and I moved in, the Basement Boys decided it would be cool to invite other roommates in violation of their contract.  I think there were ultimately 5 men living in a one-bedroom basement apartment, but I can’t remember.  What I CAN remember are the loud LAN parties they’d have nearly every night that kept me awake until 3 or 4 in the morning.  At the time, I was in school and working at least 30 hours a week as the assistant manager of a specialty gift store.  I would come home late from work or being out with friends and not be able to sleep because of the noise from the basement.  There were nights I only got three hours of sleep.  This went on for weeks until I was so exhausted I couldn’t do much more than pray and cry until I finally fell asleep.  It was both a shock and a relief when the Basement Boys told me they were moving late that February, but it was a little late for my body and mind to adjust back to normal sleeping habits.

I’d stay up late, struggle to sleep, and then have to get up and start all over again.  I don’t even know how I was functional except that I was suddenly liable for the entire rent and was working more hours than my housemate--I had no choice BUT to function.  My sleeping was pretty messed up before my trigger event, and the exhaustion of depression hit harder than it probably would have normally.  I remember being so tired I could hardly move or think, but so afraid to sleep because of the nightmares that I forced myself to stay awake until I absolutely couldn’t anymore.  When I finally slept, I had horrific dreams that woke me up with my throat tight from crying or screaming (I don’t think I ever screamed aloud, but I sure did in my dreams) and so scared that I couldn’t easily get back to sleep.  Not a good cycle, I know, but the thought of seeing a therapist hadn’t crossed my mind yet, so I lived (sort of) with the constant tiredness.

I don’t remember when, exactly, after my trigger the nightmares started.  I don’t even remember the first one I had, and I’m glad.  As they continued for close to two years, I learned to be grateful I didn’t remember some of them, because the ones I remember were horrific enough.  A lot of them involved houses--my house, my grandfather’s house, a big house that doesn’t exist in real life but that I’ve visited frequently in my dreams--or, infrequently, other buildings, like the museum/saloon that was haunted or my old junior high.  A lot of them involved people or things trying to get into the houses, or trying to sell the houses, or trying to burn down the houses.  Later on, as I was studying psychology, we learned a little bit about the theory of dream symbolism.  I don’t buy into all of it, but when I learned that a dream house symbolizes your psyche, it made a lot of sense.  My psyche was being attacked and the things I couldn’t deal with during the day were things that came out in my subconscious at night.

If the dreams weren’t just frightening, they were very violent.  I remember fires and blood and guns and death.  In one, my sons had been killed--their little bodies were behind the couch we'd used to try to barricade the window against attackers--and I remember seeing them, dead, while reloading my rifle and praying I would have good enough aim.  In another one, I accidentally shot a friend right through his forehead, and no one seemed to care.  In another, the trees in my yard were on fire and people had kidnapped my youngest sister, and I couldn't move fast enough to chase them and save her.  In one of the worst ones, I watched T get stabbed in the stomach from outside a locked door.  I screamed and screamed but no one helped and when I finally somehow got through the door, he was almost dead and all I could do was cradle his head in my lap and sob.  I woke up before the ambulances got there and was so shaken that I had to make sure he was ok and not dying in some storeroom somewhere.

Night after night after night, people died, houses burned, my loved ones were attacked...and I couldn't stop it.

Disclaimer – The views expressed here are the opinions of me and do not necessarily reflect the views of or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Oh hey.

I'm still here.  Still drafting more posts about the Year From Hell.

Here is my excuse for not blogging more regularly:  I have a new job.  We are discouraged from blogging at work unless it's directly relevant to our work, which this blog isn't.  Also, I work for the church and need to find out what the policy is about blogging.  There's some statement or other I need to put at the bottom of every blog that lets people know I'm not speaking for the church, but I can't remember where it is and I need a VPN to check our policy manual when I'm not at the office.

At my previous job, I had enough down time that I could blog and no one really cared.  This job is different, and when I get home I don't always want to sit in front of a computer for another few hours, or I don't have time to write anything.  I throw some drafts in Google Docs and consider them works in progress, but they aren't progressing very well right now.  Rest assured they're THERE, and I have an outline for how this is all going to go, but the posts won't be regular or frequent.  I'm working out how to fix that, though, because I still really feel like I need to write about the Year From Hell.

There you go, then.  I hope to get some things written in the next few days and scheduled to post automatically.  Thanks for sticking with me. :)