Sleep to Dream

I'm having trouble sleeping. Boyfriend Dave says I've been thrashing about a lot in bed. Over Thanksgiving weekend, when we took a romantic trip, I woke up screaming in terror both nights. I talk in my sleep, but it's just word salad so there's no way to know if I'm trying to communicate, or if I'm just talking from my dreams. I'm not conscious of any of this going on, but this is hardly the first time I've heard about any of it. I know my bottom sheets have been pulled off every morning when I got up, and that sharing a bed with me means not sleeping.

That's how I'm sleeping on two anxiety pills, two SSRIs, and two Tylenol PMs. We went out to look at the two houses we're deciding between, and it's in the city where my ex-mother-in-law lives (and where my exhusband might very well live). I had flashbacks, spent about an hour (twice throughout the outing) bawling my eyes out, and I couldn't explain enough how terrified I am by that short, stupid, drunk motherfucker. I hate that he terrifies me and I hate that I stayed with him as long as I did, and let him do those horrible things, and let him make me think I was crazy, and that he wasn't really the bad guy; I was just an unreasonable bitch with hormone problems and mental illness.

I had the twitches (pretty violent startled movements) for the rest of the evening - at the coffee place, at the bar, on the drive home, while trying to go to sleep, and apparently, during my sleep, too. I've done it a couple times so far today, also. Domestic violence fucking sucks and it's not even in the top 5 things that fucked me up the most; it's just one of the most recent. And the one I'm least able to understand. I think my grandmother is crazy and a monster, yet I can still see how it all makes sense to her, and how she is detached emotionally. Ronnie wasn't like that. He was almost excessively emotional; he would cry when we faught as a way of manipulating me into stopping my criticisms of him (because of course, it would never have occurred to him tha tthe solution would be for him to address my criticisms.) I remember how hurt and offended he acted when I dared to accuse him of being a bad provider. Never mind that he was a bad provider, who drank and pissed most of his paycheck away before Friday even rolled around, who squandered money right and left on his own petty vices and addictions, who cashed in his infant son's change jar to buy crack.

I don't blame myself for anything in the cult, but I don't know how not to blame myself for marrying that asshole.



I tried so hard to look like her. When I succeeded in getting down to her BMI (18.6), I felt bad all the time. Hell, I'm only 13 lbs. heavier than her now, and that's on a grocery store scale and those things are never accurate. Plus, I really don't consider a weight accurate unless it's first thing in the morning, before I've had anything to eat or drink, and in the nude (because FSM knows the ounce of weight from underwear will have me completely off!) Don't worry, I' eating. Little Man flooded the bathroom and ruined my digital scale almost a year ago, and I haven't replaced it. I just forgot how thin she looked, and how badly I wanted that for myself. I thought I would be happy if I was skinny. It didn't work, but the lie still whispers through my mind at night.

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Prayer Bugs Me

My mother never pried. She had faults as a mother, but invasion of privacy was never one of them. She knew the importance of private thoughts. While I think her unwillingness to pry into my feelings left her unaware of the pain and mental confusion I was in for a long time, I have to say I value and respect the choice she made to let me be my own person, with my own thoughts and feelings. I could leave my diary open on the coffee table and know that she'd never read it.

Yet, I always felt better writing outside of the house, somewhere secret and quasi-magical. It was down by the blackberry patch at the creek when I was a small child, then onto a copse of trees beside a frozen golf course waterfall at the first place in Iowa, and either in a tree at the edge of a cornfield or on top of a wall holding back a hill from a parking lot at the second place in Iowa. When we first moved back to Florida, in to the apartments, I would sit beneath the willow tree on the bank of the man-made lake; once we moved into the house in the suburbs, I sat at on the dock at the riverfront park down the road.

So it shouldn't have surprised me, at 20 years old and living in my own place, that I still might feel the need to leave to write in peace. I remember crying, gasping in big tantruming toddler gulps of air, sobbing out loud to Jesus. "They say you won't give me more than I handle, but I'm telling you, I can't handle this! It's too hard. It never gets any easier and it never gets any better. Every time I think it's gonna get better, it just gets worse, and I'm tired of fighting all the damn time!" At the time, I was crying about money and how there just didn't seem to be enough of it. At other times, I cried nearly the exact same script, at the end of my rope, utterly desperate, crying heavenward and begging for mercy. Sometimes things would seem to get a little bit better following one of these break downs, but I didn't seem to be getting spiritual fruit or reaping any benefit for the trials I was going through. I was under the impression that when God tested you, when He gave you all that you could handle, when you survived it, you were rewarded for remaining faithful. Wasn't that the whole point of Job?

I feel sad and betrayed when I look back on those times. I knew that I needed help to carry life's burdens, but because I thought God was going to do that - and when there were only one set of footprints in the sand, that meant He was carrying me - I didn't look hard enough at the resources around me. Two weeks later, one night instead of calling on God, I called the suicide hotline. I'm typing this today because that was the right choice. It would still be another year till I got my first mental health diagnosis, and another five years till I found the right combination of diet, exercise, sleep, and medication, but it was a start. I was beginning to deal with my problems, instead of waiting on God to fix my breakfast.

Because God was nothing more than a voice in a head, He could never offer any comfort I wasn't capable of giving myself, or any insight I was incapable of having. Reliance on God, in mental and emotional anguish as in all things, caused me more pain. When I depend on God, when I say "It's all in His hands", I stop taking positive actions in my own life.

I would have gotten a therapist, a diagnosis, and medication sooner if I hadn't been raised in a faith healing cult, certainly. But I think I would have got them sooner still if I hadn't been raised a believer. I hate prayer now. It actively infuriates me when people bow before an imaginary construct, grovel and beg NOTHING, to fix their problems instead of working to fix them themselves.

I still struggle with money and I still struggle with a list of mental disorders. I am still crazy. But I don't have to beg any god to make me sane now - I can take medications, make alterations to my lifestyle, avoid certain foods. I can manage my life without a higher power. Believing in one hindered my drive for self-sufficiency and kept me dependent and child-like long past the time the world expected me to behave as an adult.

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Demons in the Night

I've had insomnia since I was about 7 years old. I have the kind where it's difficult to fall asleep, no matter how tired I am. I've tried just about every trick and technique you can imagine over the years. Lots of exercise, throughout the day; exercise in the morning and cool off at night to keep my heart rate low; exercise at night only; and total couch potato. High fiber, high protein, low carb, low calorie. I've tried meditation and guided imagery, relaxing music, candles, and bubble baths. I've eaten foods to encourage serotonin and melatonin; foods like pineapple, yogurt, bananas, and warm milk. Needless to say, not much has worked.

It's ultimately fear of nightmares that keeps me awake. Going to sleep when my anxiety levels are high just isn't worth it. I could spend the hours tossing and turning, continuing to feel worse, or I could watch TV on Hulu, play sudoku at USA Today, catch up on Atheist Experience and Pat Condel videos on YouTube, join discussions at Atheist Nexus and Ex-Christian.net, catch up on liberal news via Huffington Post and the less liberal AP, or just listen to music while playing on Popcap or Jigzone. Anything but getting caught inside my own brain.

Have I mentioned that anxiety sucks? I've actually got a pretty good handle on it, but trying to avoid the feeling of being anxious is a job itself. I think my anxiety started as soon as I was old enough to understand the word "demon". My childhood nightmares were never boogy men or witches. I didn't even know what mummies or zombies were, because I wasn't allowed to participate in Halloween or read scary stories.

The first time I called someone to my room at night to investigate the creature under my bed, it wasn't a monster I feared (like in "Where the Wild Things Are") but a demon. A shadow moving across the wall, a prickling feeling of being watched, bad thoughts in my head. We weren't allowed to confess to any fear (part of the "Word of Faith" idea - no "negative confessions", so I couldn't really talk to anyone about my fears and anxieties. I'd been taught to fear the world, and it worked, but now admitting that would be the same as spitting in God's eye. I had to ignore my fear away (just like pain, sadness, or any other emotion I had as a child). Kind of not surprising really, I'm still not great at dealing with bad dreams, or thinking about how I feel frightened. It's much more soothing to just keep myself distracted, and the internet is great for that.

And people say religion does no harm. Puh-lease.

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