I was trying to wake up...half in a dream...struggling out of it. About a third of the way through being raped and highly distressed and beginning to wake up...it takes what feels like minutes to be able to open my eyes fully and not slip back into the dream, I've no idea of actually how long it is. I open my eyes and I can see daylight outside my window, and I instantly feel some relief. Once I am able to move (I often wake 'frozen', to scared to move and it sometimes takes awhile for me to keep repeating to myself that I am awake and 'safe' and my body will let me move again) I wipe the tears from my face and lean up to look over at the alarm clock to see the time, it's 6.29... and I realise that it's actually the end of my afternoon nap and almost nighttime and not morning at all. Dissapointment and resolve creep in.
I'm able to acknowledge how I feel, realise it, name it and tell myself that I can understand why I may feel like that, but I am allowed to keep going, I don't have to be over-ridden by that feeling. Right now writing about it though, it does make me sad, being in this place where those thoughts of how much I don't like the night are so close. It's a sign to me that I am not doing so well in general, the quicker I go to thoughts like that, and the harder it is not be overwhelmed by the feeling.
Today I went to sleep between 4-4.30pm and slept for a couple of hours. Most days I have a nap. Mainly because I don't get that much sleep at night, or not enough sleep at night...and if I don't get enough sleep it causes all sorts of other problems. Everything is harder when I am sleep deprived. It's harder to cope with the world, my physical health deteriorates (I have a long term kidney/bladder problem), I get triggered easier and it's harder to reassure myself, do the next best thing, and keep myself safe. When I'm tired, I am usually more anxious and fearful, and even simple things become more difficult, like remembering to eat properly...which goes on to cause more problems if not got right.
I have no enjoyment of knowing that most days I have to have a nap as part of my basic self-care. I don't like knowing that as a fairly young woman that my every day is constricted by knowing that I will have to have a nap when I am tired, not knowing when that will be, not being able to plan much or to commit to much in life because of this. The shame of the real reason for this is not something I can share with people, except my therapist.
I don't have as many nightmares when I sleep during the day as when I sleep at night. So as a result I am not usually scared about going to sleep during the day and I am at night. It would be the easy thing to try and sleep as much as possible during the day because of this. It is also easier waking up from a nightmare to it being daytime, it doesn't take as long to 'come back' to where I really am when it is daylight. So all this would make a big motivator to spend all day in bed, but as much as possible I try to only have a small nap during the day and persist with trying to have 'normal' night time sleeps.
It's probably only in the last year that I have started giving myself permission to have these naps during the day as part of my self-care, I thought I was alright with it, but just writing this has made me realise how much shame I still have about why I need to do this, how I wouldn't even be able to explain it to anyone, and even just having writing this is overwhelming.
I have spent the last 8 years on a journey of healing, of making the decision to stop trying to run away from my fear, to stop dealing with it all my way and acting out on it in socially unacceptable ways and things coming out sideways and ending up trying to kill myself every year or two.
It's been a hard slog, about six weeks ago in therapy, I had a moment where I had suddenly realised that I had just come past half way. After years of going to 12-step meetings, being clean and in recovery, doing the next best thing in all areas of my life, in and out of therapy with a concentration of it over the last two years...I had finally gotten up a few months not self-harming, cutting, which is huge for me. Not cutting actually made things worse, cutting was a way (just like using drugs) was just of pushing the memories away... so it meant that for the first time there was pretty much nothing (nothing unhealthy and dangerous, old coping stratagies) in the way. It meant the the nightmares were worse, but I was finally in a place where I was going to be able to fix the foundation of my life. It was an amazing session and an amazing realisation. I had been technically 'single' for about 18 months, barely having any contact with my ex-boyfriend, it had been over a year since I had had a guy stay the night (something which of course makes me feel safer at night, but of course there is a 'cost' to this... not the right reason that I really wanted to have a guy in my bed, and would normally have a high price and other triggers... something that I've had to do alot of hard honest work around, especially since there pretty much unlimited guys wanting to be there), and I was struggling with the intensity of the nightmares and not using ANY of my old coping stratigies to take the edge of or help me cope. But there was some excitement that I've never had before, there was this glimmer of hope, belife that I might really be able to change some things, work on some stuff, do some processing, that I had never able to do before, that I was beinging to believe actually might change me having these awful awful dreams and getting raped over and over again in my head. If ending my life, or the choice to do so is about looking at that quality of life and creating a line, knowing that if that life will be permanently below that line then that is when not wanting to continue living becomes a viable option. One of the biggest reasons that contributes to that line for me would be knowing that I would be raped every time I went to sleep for the rest of my life. If that was a definite then I would not want that life, I have have often wondered what others would think on this, but it is not something that I can discuss with someone.
So a few weeks ago, just a week after this amazing discovery of hope in therapy I got a call from ACC letting me know I only had 5 remaining sessions until a DATA was completed. Between that time and Friday just gone (almost a month) neither my therapist or I had any information or replys to communication from ACC at all. My therapist set up an urgent DATA that I had only days after this phone call. After pressing them (ACC) about the release of my information against the privacy act last week they finally said that one of their clinicians was reviewing the results of the DATA report and there should be some communication by the end of the week. I saw my therapist on Friday and she said that she had heard from ACC and they had decided that it was best clinically for me to go from seeing her twice a week to once a fortnight.
The night before my DATA I sat up cutting all night. I have been cutting, seeing my ex-boyfriend alot, isolated myself from all support, and anxious, not eating, and considering going to shoot up smack. I can step outside of myself and I feel so sad for how far back I have gone over the last few weeks. Initially I was so angry at ACC, and I guess I still am. But all I am thinking about most of the time now is how I will get raped when I go to sleep tonight. And how that glimmer of hope that I had seems like a wisp of smoke, long gone and growing harder to remember. Do I have a future healing from what has happened, building that new foundation with 13 days between each visit to my therapist? Is there any point in even trying anymore? I've fought so hard for so long, and I just don't know if there is anything left.
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