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. :)

Bringing the newcomers up to speed

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.

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.

Trying to write about the nightmares

I've started a draft about the nightmares stemming from the Year From Hell, but it is proving to be incredibly difficult.  Much more difficult than I thought.  Remembering some of them has me almost in tears, and the old fear of sleep threatens to come back.  It never really does, but the threats are, well, unpleasant enough.  Now, as I'm typing this, I've remembered that I need to talk about the sleep deprivation I experienced for a long time, and how the nightmares and the sleep phobia exacerbated it.  Looks like I'll have to do the nightmare posts as a series.  Maybe that'll help me write them, because, MAN, it's hard.  It's really, really hard.

Sick or Hungry? (Part 3) (WARNING: This blog may contain triggers if you are struggling with an eating disorder.)

Wow.  It's been hard to write about my stomach issues.  I've had to remember some very difficult things, but it's actually been good for me to talk about it.  It's been good to remember the hard things--it makes me so grateful for where I am now! 

This post is going to be hard, too.  I'm going to talk about someone very dear to me, and it will probably embarrass him, so I'll just refer to him by his first initial and those of you who know who I'm talking about can silently appreciate his friendship and concern.  He is a good man and our friendship has survived through some pretty rough times.

T moved out of the state in August 2002, but moved back in April (I think) 2003.  During the months he was gone, we chatted and talked on the phone quite a bit, but it was good to have him back in the state.  Sometime in the first half of 2003, a local theater (The Grove in Pleasant Grove) started doing karaoke nights every Friday for a $5 cover.  I think the first karaoke night was in April or May of that year, and many of my theatre friends participated.  We always had a good time--there were contests and theme nights and lots of great music.  I think it was in the fall of that year that T noticed I would say I wasn't hungry, which was usually true, whenever anyone offered me food (at friends' houses, restaurants, or popcorn The Grove).  Sometimes I didn't feel like eating, sometimes my stomach hurt, sometimes the thought of chewing and swallowing was enough to over-activate my gag reflex.  One night during karaoke, T took me outside to talk; I figured it would be about his girl trouble, but it wasn't.  He said "if a friendship isn't worth risking because you're worried about your friend, it's not much of a friendship," then he looked me right in the eyes and said he'd noticed I never ate and confronted me with his concern that I might be anorexic.  I was shocked.  I was angry.  I don't really remember what I told him, but it must have been something along the lines of, "how dare you accuse me of that!"  T reiterated what he said previously--that he was worried enough about me to risk losing my friendship by expressing his concern--and we parted ways. 

I didn't talk to him for two weeks because I was so livid.  When we finally did talk again after I'd calmed down, I told him I appreciated his concern, I wanted to still be friends, and I would work on trying to eat more.  It wasn't until I was sitting in my abnormal psychology class in 2005, listening to the lecture about eating disorders, that I realized T had good reason to be concerned.  I almost started crying in class (that happened a lot in that class--there was some very intense and difficult subject matter) because the realization was so sudden and harsh; the professor was going over the indicators of an eating disorder and I knew I manifested more of them than I wanted to think about.  I wasn't anorexic, but I was definitely experiencing a form of disordered eating and it was too close for comfort.  I talked to T later that week (maybe that same evening) and apologized for being so angry with him months earlier.  I told him he was right to be concerned and thanked him for being willing to risk losing me in order to get me to see what I was doing to myself.

It was after that I remember looking at my thighs and being grateful they weren't skin and bones, being grateful that my body had substance to it.  Some other good friends later told me that they had noticed a physical change (they said my face had started to hollow out) but didn't know how to talk to me about it.  It was enough to know, even years later, that people who loved me were concerned.

My sweet mother also helped; she used to ask me, when she noticed I was cranky or tired, if I'd eaten.  She seemed to understand that sometimes I just wasn't hungry, but she noticed the drop in blood sugar and its effect on me long before I made the connection.  Between my family and my friends, I became more aware of my disordered eating and began to recognize the differences between illness and hunger.  It wasn't that my stomach felt different--it was other things that clued me in.  I sometimes, even now, go through a mental checklist to figure out if it's hunger pain or just pain:  Is it morning?  When was the last time I ate?  Am I cranky?  Did I just do something stressful?  Has it been a bad day at work? 

As I've said earlier, it's not NEARLY as bad as it used to be, but I still have days I just can't tell the difference.  I usually err on the side of hunger, figuring that if I'm actually sick instead, at least I'll have something in my stomach to throw up, which is much more comfortable than the dry heaves.

This is why I won't ever go on a diet unless it's for legitimate medical reasons (allergy, disease, etc).  I don't want to come NEAR anything that could trigger disordered eating behavior, so don't try to convert me to your cabbage soup cleanses or juice fasts. :)

Sick or Hungry? (part 2) (warning: vomit!)

I can't remember when I started really eating normally again, but I do know I was still having issues in 2004 and occasionally since then.  I have frustrating days when I'm just not hungry, or can't tell if I'm sick instead of hungry.  I had a bad week in May--my stomach just hurt and I didn't know if I had a stomach bug or was just stressed and tired and not eating enough.  I get so angry when that happens because I feel like I can't control it.  I tried eating, I tried not eating, I tried antacids, but nothing worked.  I finally gave up and just let my stomach chew on itself for a night and felt better in the morning.  I call it a "grabby" stomach:  sometimes (not nearly as much now) when I eat it's as though my stomach clenches onto the food, which also hurts.  Sometimes I just have to err on the side of hunger.  I figure if I'm going to throw up, at least I'll have something to throw up. 


About two years ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night with the familiar stomach pain.  I drank a glass of milk and pulled out the heating pad, which usually worked.  Not that night.  Not an hour later, the cramps started again and I thought I might be sick, so I headed to the bathroom when things took a turn for the worse.  The cramps became so bad I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.  My chest hurt, I couldn't breathe, and I very literally prayed that I wasn't going to die.  After several agonizing minutes, I was finally able to make myself vomit (HIGHLY unpleasant), which relieved some of the pressure and pain, and cried my way back to bed.  I called my doctor the next day and he diagnosed me with a hiatal hernia--which basically means there is a weak spot in my diaphragm and my stomach likes to try crawling up my esophagus into my chest cavity--and put me on a heavy-duty antacid.  I have some really effective therapies for when it acts up, but I blame the Year From Hell for it.  I didn't have issues until then, and it's been recurrent since.

My stomach issues from the Year From Hell have made me almost paranoid about not eating enough.  This is why I will never go on a restrictive diet unless I become diabetic or something.  The thought of restricting my calorie intake in such a way makes me anxious that I'll go through that kind of near-daily pain again, and I refuse to do it.