For the last three months, I have been having problems sleeping. I'm working with my doctor to get that sorted out but it really sucks. I wake up a lot during the night and I am waking up with this disoriented sensation that I can't fully tell where/when I am. I and my doctor concur that this is a manifestation of my brain having issues with my c-ptsd. What do I do when I wake up like that? Well, I get out of bed and wander around the apartment checking on everyone to make sure they're ok before I get a drink of water and try to get more sleep.
Last night, I only woke up twice. For some insane reason, I am completely drag-ass tired today. I feel like I didn't sleep at all. It'd be easier if I could still remember my dreams. I'm on some serious medication to help me sleep and one of the effects is it basically makes me forget what I was dreaming. My brain is working overtime to try to process something and I can't figure out what it is. But the end result is random flashbacks during the day, existential dread, derealization, and major sleep problems. It really sucks to be a trauma survivor.
The other day, I saw some person on the internet posting that trauma makes you stronger. I wanted to reach through the internet and high-five them with a brick to the face. Trauma doesn't make you stronger. You've always had that strength inside you. People are resilient as hell. Trauma just fucks up your brain, scars it in ways that other experiences can't, and leaves you operating at a bit of a deficit compared to neurotypical people who just don't understand what the hell your problems are like.
I get angry with neurotypical people who tell me that I'm brave because I survived horrible shit. I get furious with it. I am not brave because of it. I simply didn't let them kill me. I endured awful shit with the grim determination that if I can get through one day, I can get through the next. That wasn't courage. That was just survival mode. Courage was standing up to my parents when they went to go after my brothers when we were small and I was four foot nothing and a bean pole. Yep, I got my ass beat for pushing my way between my parents and my younger brothers when they were about to whoop the hell out of them for just being typical boys. But it switched their focus from my brothers to me, which gave my brothers a chance to spirit off to their room and hide until my parents were done with me and got that rage out of their system.
That was courage. Not the grim process of getting up and facing the day where you didn't know which rules were getting changed as per the parent's whim. I regularly pushed my way between them and my brothers. I also did shit like keep my brother from getting kicked out of a second story window because my mother woke up out of a night terror and flailed. The screen went flying, but I had a solid grip on my toddler brother and dragged him back in the window. I was six. I don't know if that stuff qualifies as courage, to be honest. I just saw that there was a problem and somebody had to do something to solve it. I got punished for it, damn near every time, to be honest, but I kept doing it because my parents basically put me in charge of my brothers' welfare up until all three of us hit elementary school.
Then I got into trouble for being a 'little mother' to them. Never mind that I was changing diapers, supervising them, and acting as a 'little mother' when my mom didn't feel like doing it. Which was pretty often. My parents called me their problem child. Which is pretty damn funny, in a really dark way. I did my best to follow the rules, no matter how rapidly they changed. My brothers, on the other hand, were out doing stupid shit and my parents turned a blind eye to it. I tried to stop them. I was the reason why my brother's alcohol problem got caught in high school and I was the reason why my brother was intercepted trying to run off with some rando he met on the internet at fourteen.
But, I was the problem child. Why? Because I refused to lie when they wanted me to. Because I stood up to them or resisted their demands when they ran contrary to what I had been taught was right and wrong. Because when mom started using me as her therapist, I said I can't do this at 10. At 12, I ran away from home because mom was doing the 'therapy' thing and telling me that she was going to divorce my father but I couldn't tell anyone. At which point I said, "Fuck this noise." and walked out of the house. I stayed with a friend for about two weeks. My parents made contact through a neutral party who knew us and the friend's parents. I was told that I was making my father cry because I wasn't coming home. I told my mother if she wanted me to come home, she had to tell my father everything and get marriage counseling.
Next thing I know, I've got my parents setting up family counseling sessions. We did it for a month. It was useless because my brothers and I had been trained via regular beatings not to talk about shit that happened in that house. My parents theoretically got their marital differences sorted out. I will say, mom stopped throwing cast iron across the house at dad after that happened. The damage, however, I think was done. Because things have never been quite right between them and only gotten weirder as time has gone on. And I kept getting called on to be the person to smooth things over between them.
I confronted them about this and the history of psychological abuse at the urging of my therapist in college. She said that it was an opportunity to clear the air and rebuilt a healthier relationship based on the fact that I was a grown adult. Yeah, that went about as well as expected. I was called the bad guy because I made my mother cry and my parents threatened to kick me out of the house and pull me out of college if it ever came up again. That crazy bullshit continued into my mid-20s. I still have days where I wake up and I am left wondering if my life that I have now is real or if it's an elaborate fantasy that I created to escape my parents. Derealization is an awful thing and I don't wish it on anybody.
But, my timer is up. I've done my word vomit for the morning. I apologize if this was distressing for anyone to read. I've been writing down the really ugly stuff in my therapy journal. It's just been preying on my mind for weeks and real hard to cope with. So, I write about it and that takes a little of the pressure off.
No comments:
Post a Comment