I'd Like to Forget Today

Today has pretty much sucked. Well, I can't say the whole day has been bad, but the bad things from today have definitely outweighed the good.

Last night I dreamt I was raped twice by a male friend that I actually truly trust. We've been friends for 12 years, and he's married to one of my best friends. He's more of a big brother to me, and has never been anything but gracious to me. Why in the heck would I have this dream??? And why am I dreaming about being hurt as an adult by one of the few people in my life I really do trust? Nothing in this realm has happened to me since this body grew up, and the man in my dream has never been remotely inappropriate towards me. So why?????? And why does it have to be one of those dreams I can't shake no matter how hard I try? Randomly I briefly spoke to my friend (the wife of the man in my nightmare last night) on the phone tonight, and I felt so awkward. I felt ashamed and like I had something to hide or owed her an apology. grrr...

Then I found out this afternoon that my grandmother has cancer again and we know for sure it's in her liver. She has to have more tests to find out if it's anywhere else as well, but it doesn't look good. She's had cancer before and has said she won't do chemo again. So I wonder, did my grandmother basically just get her death sentence today? Obviously finding out she has cancer today, doesn't change how fast or slow the cancer has been growing, but it's been nice living in denial this past week, letting myself think she had gallbladder issues.

I hope I get tired soon. I just want today to be over. Maybe if I sleep well tonight, I can have a better perspective on things tomorrow. Right now it just feels like everything sucks.... even though I know this is not true.... this is still how I feel.

Blah.

Satan's Tactics

Last night I had a horrible dream. I've always been a vivid dreamer. My dreams are usually so intricate and detailed, that I am unable to tell that I am dreaming until after I wake up. Many times it takes me awhile after I wake up to fully realize that what just happened was in a dream and not my reality. This morning was one of those mornings. I woke up shaking. I could tell I'd been crying a lot, and for a good 5 minutes, I was convinced my dream was real. Only when I was able to truly realize where I was and what was going on around me did I begin to realize it was a dream and be able to calm down.

Last night I dreamt that my husband was home. He'd been home from deployment for a bit and was daily walking through my current therapy struggles with me. Long story short, in my dream he told me that he'd had enough... that my crazy and my issues were too much for him... he was done.. it was over between us... and there was nothing I can do change his mind. I was heartbroken. The man who has done more to understand than any other man in my life; The man who promised me forever; The man who I adored was walking out. In my dream I was thinking if he wouldn't stay, no one ever will.

Praise God this was only a dream!!! Even though it was a dream, I found myself having a hard time shaking the feelings this morning. I wanted nothing more to call hubby and have him put my mind and heart at ease. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that since he is deployed. Fortunately, I serve a God who is always available. As I turned to God to relieve my pain and fears from this dream, I got hit with a couple of realities:

1. I didn't reach for God first to calm my fears. I was looking for human comfort first. Now, I believe human comfort is good and very much needed. However, I've been learning over the past several years that human comfort doesn't compare to the peace and contentment that God can provide. I'm not beating myself up over this, but it was a good reality check and a good opportunity to refocus my mind on God first and on my family and friends second.

2. Satan uses anything he can to undermine anything positive and healthy in our lives. When I think back over my life, dreams/nightmares are a way that satan has always reached me and tormented me. It's pretty creative and sneaky to attack me in my sleep.. to plant doubts, fears, and horrors in my mind while I sleep. These type of attacks are so much harder to recognize and combat than the obvious and blatant ones. I have no doubt that satan knows this and uses it to his advantage.

These two realities, while not fun, really helped me to regain focus this morning, reality test the dream and put satan back in his place. I ended up having a pretty decent day today. In the past, I would have stayed debilitated internally by a dream like this, but today we let it go and trusted God that he was watching over us, our husband, and the truth.

I count this as a victory, but I wish sometimes there weren't so many battles to fight. The only promise any of us have been given though is that God will see us through all of them and He has won them all. Praise Him for that!

And the Nightmares Return

I had wishingly hoped my nightmares had stopped forever. I've always been a dreamer. Six our of seven days a week, I can tell you what I dreamt about the night before. Forever they were nightmares or flashbacks in my dreams. However, over the last year or so, most of them had been silly or nonsensical dreams - and usually based around something going on in my current life.

Three nights running now I've had nightmares again. The kind that are a mix of flashbacks, current people, and stuff that hasn't or doesn't currently exist in my life. So, on one hand, when I wake up, I can tell that these dreams are not totally real events that occurred because past and present and fiction are all blurred together in one dream. On the other hand, the nightmares feel so life-like that I've been waking up in the fetal position, shaking in fear, with a level of anxiety and depression that I haven't felt for a couple of years. Grounding and distraction have helped me get up and get through my days, but nothing is fully shaking the anxiety and looming sense of doom.

I'm getting a better picture of where this may be coming from internally and where this may be headed, but most of it is still very foggy and just trapped in feelings. What I am aware of tells me this isn't going to be the end of the world, but it's gonna be a beast of a ride for a bit. :P

I am still in a much better place with this going on than I have been in the past, but I must admit that I'm wondering... Will I ever talk, heal enough that new waves won't keep cropping up?

I want so badly to talk to hubby... to tell him what's going on... to let him walk this with me to feel supported but to also help him understand some of what I went through before we met. But he's on the other side of the world putting his life on the line every day. The last thing I want is for his attention to be focused on me or worrying about me. I need him to focus on his job so he can come back home to me in one piece. I also am not sure how much he can understand via e-mail and occasional video chatting. Part of me is wondering if telling him will make it harder instead of easier if he can't understand b/c of the distance and lack of communication between us right now.

I can't believe this hurts so much and I feel so alone in this. We've done stuff like this before. We know we can get to the other side of this. But it's been almost 3 years since we felt this badly. I really really thought that part of my life might be over with. I really am ready to move on with my life. Goodness knows I still have enough day to day issues that were keeping me in therapy. Do we really need to go back and cover more of this stuff??

God, please just take this part away. I don't want to go through more nightmares, flashbacks, and memories. I get what happened to us. I haven't tried to deny it in a long time. Please don't make me relive all of it. I feel like I know and have felt enough. Please, please just take this away and replace it with your peace... Your miraculous peace that passes all understanding. Please.

Nightmares

When you have horriffic nightmares every night for years, you are so sure you will never forget what those nights are like and what they do to you... At least that's how I felt. When my nightly nightmares stopped, I was thrilled but was confident I would always remember how horrible they are so I could be grateful for every good night up sleep I get now.

Well, I was totally wrong. I had horrible nightmares last night for the first time in a long time, and I am wiped today. I feel anxious and depressed. I can't stop thinking about my dreams last night. It's amazing how time can help you forget how awful something truly was. Feeling like this today does make it easier to remember why every day was sooooooooooo hard for soooooo long and I felt like I was NEVER going to get relief.

I know I am blessed now in that I typically don't have nightmares two nights in a row and b/c I don't have to be anywhere today so I can just be. But I hate feeling on the verge of tears, depressed and wanting to "justify, explain, argue" the things in my dreams last night. It feels rediculous. The dream was not a memory but a lot of the feelings resulting from the dream can be related to old memories and feelings. And who am I wanting to explain and defend myself to? No one saw the dream but me and it wasn't real.

I didn't get out of bed until noon today, and I know that's a recipie for disaster for me, but I was just so exhausted from the lack of peacful sleep from the night that i couldn't get up when my alarm clock went off. My felt like a lead weight and my eye lids were soooo heavy. So, I didn't fight it today and I gave in to trying to get a small amount of sleep. It did help me feel more rested but I don't think it helped the depression I'm feeling today. blah.

It doesn't help that I will feel guilty tonight from not doing anything today. I mean, I could at least get out and go to the grocery store but the thought of that makes me want to cry. I just want to stay curled up on the couch all day. Why does doing what feels comforting when you're feeling bad lead to guilt that I should have done more today - at least the bare minimum?

Smart therapist *May trigger*

So, I guess it's part of the reason I continue to go to therapy... Not only to deal with childhood hurts and current difficulties but also to gain insight and perspective. I must say I am mostly grateful, but sometimes after I talk over something with her, the answer makes so much sense that I wonder why I didn't see it myself?

Today in therapy we talked about the nightmare I had Monday night. After talking over with therapist the dream now makes sense. A lot of the later, more extensive abuse took place in my abuser's basement. The new apt. that I just moved into is in the basement of a house and a family lives in the house upstairs. While my new apartment is completely finished, furnished, and looks nothing like the basement from my childhood, it is very feasible that the literal similarities of being in a basement witn an older man living in the house above us could have majorly triggered parts. Thankfully therapist and I both think these feelings will be passing the longer we stay and see that this situation is a safe one and very different from our childhood memories. The family that owns the house and the apartment have been nothing but great to me. They are safe people and hopefully this will prove to be a great learning experience for all of us.

In the meantime, we will just continue to talk things out in therapy and pray that the nightmares get less and less everynight until they're gone. We also aren't under any contract at this place, so should our symptoms get worse as time goes on (which I highly doubt), we can move out at any point into a new place. I think that's comforting to some inside. We are not trapped in this living situation at all.

We're out of town for the rest of the week and weekend, so maybe when we're back in the apartment Monday night we'll be rested and ready to give the new place a go again.

A little better

Last night's sleep went a little better. Rather than being physically traumatized in my dreams, I just dreamt that my wedding day was an absolute disaster, and the worst part was at the end of the dream fiance and I weren't even married. I assume last night's dream is common for many brides-to-be, so it wasn't near as difficult to shake.

Still, the dreams were so vivid, I had a really hard time waking up this morning. I haven't done any med changes recently, so those that help me sleep are still at the same dosage. I'm really hoping this is a phase that will pass quickly. It is no fun waking up feeling like you've run a marathon in your sleep and feeling more tired than when you lied down the night before.

Here's hoping night 3 will be the charm....

First Night Didn't Go so Well

Well, I'm definitely more settled in and have personal effects up now. My new place is really nice and I think we will like it here. However, last night was one of the worst nights of sleep/dreaming we've had in a long time.

Our new apartment is a basement/mother-in-law style apartment in the basement of this family's house where I will be attending church while in this city. They've been nothing but gracious to me and are allowing me to live here for next to nothing. If I wasn't used to substituting random people and random situations into my nightmares, then I think I would feel guilty about last nights dreams on top of how awful the dreams made me feel. Luckily, I can seperate that this was just a dream and has no bearing on the people living upstairs.

This is the part where I talk about the dream. *May be triggering*


I dreamt the man of the household held me captive in my apartment. Except the apartment wasn't in the basement of their house. It was a cabin in the woods. And the man holding me captive was my landlord, but he didn't look like the man who lives upstairs in this house. He used me and abused me. I have pictures in my mind of him raping me that are so vivid, that if I hadn't been an adult in my dream and know for a fact nothing has happened to me as an adult, I would swear these were real memories resurfacing.

I was able to escape at some point. In my dream, I told my mother (something I never did as a child or would have done in the past) and they moved me out immediately promising to find me a safer place to live. This part of the dream was validating, but I remember feeling so traumatized by the time that I was rescued that it didn't feel it mattered.

I woke up a few times during the night but was never able to stop the dream. The dream either picked up where it left off or started over again. It's been a long time since we've had a traumatic dream that appeared to take place in the present. I was so drained this morning and so overwhelmed by all the feelings and images, I wasn't able to get out of bed until noon today. Thankfully, today was just a day of unpacking, so it didn't matter much.

Really praying tonight's sleep is better. If we start a pattern of nightmares at the beginning of sleeping in this new place, then it will never feel safe to lots of parts inside and we really need home to be a safe place.