Afraid to Sleep

 I'm afraid to go to sleep anymore. 

I've always had trouble sleeping, since earliest childhood memories. It is hard to get to sleep. It takes 1-4 hours to get to sleep. 

I hate silence. My house is one that is especially silent, unless you hear the wind wuthering about, which, with the trees as tall as they are now, you rarely hear anymore. 

They say it is telling of childhood trauma. What isn't? Everything is a childhood trauma these days, and, being one that figures herself littered with childhood trauma like so many free stickers handed out at every child education event...add on another, baby. 

Silence is hated. I used to know the cycle of the refrigerator and the heat pump. How long they would run. It was a blessing if the hour long refrigerator run timed with another hour long run of the heat pump. Heaven help you if you didn't fall asleep in that two hour span....because it was followed by two hours of dead silence. 

I don't need much noise. In fact, too much is as disturbing to sleep as too little. 

I have slept with the TV on for decades now. Low, so dark you cannot see the actors, on repeat; I have burned through my Laverne and Shirley DVDs, and have had to buy replacements. I actually kind of hate the show now, but it is the only guaranteed show for night time sleeping. 

During my marriage, I began to have nightmares. I began to wake up, sitting bolt upright, fighting the blankets, and taking the breath to scream. 

I cannot begin to tell you the reasons for those screams. 

But now, it is worse. 

Now I wake up crying. Sobbing. 

And first I have to escape the nightmares to wake up, and escape them enough to move. I think I am dealing with sleep paralysis, meaning I wake up during a part of sleep that holds you still to protect your body. You aren't supposed to become cognizant before the paralysis wears off. 

I am. And I can't move. Terrified of the nightmare, unable to move, fighting to move a finger, then my arm...if I can just please move enough to turn on a light. 

And then I will have tears streaming down my face and into my ears. Sobs escaping me. 

Get counseling, everyone said. 

Six months later, I fired my counselor. She said once she couldn't deal with grief or crying people. So I stopped being upset in counseling, and thus halted any sort of movement in any direction. So I'm a bit burned by counseling and I am back to coping on my own, burned and scalded, crawling over broken glass. 

I am on various medications to attempt to help with sleep. I am on medications to help with no iron in my bone marrow. I am supposed to be on meds for autoimmune diseases. I am still trying to find out what happened with that. Ehlers-Danlos...braces. 

I've spent my whole life not being good enough. And while I stand on my own two feet more than I ever did, thanks to a divorce, those hauntings and ghosts won't leave me alone: Try harder. You aren't wanted here. You aren't cool enough. You aren't fun enough. Don't talk. 

That crushed me to near oblivion all those years ago. And very few people even know that. I'm not sure how many cared at the time, either. 

I just want someone to say they are proud of me. I want someone to say "good job, my girl," rather than either belittling me for getting off of disability or telling me I could have it worse or telling me to buck up and shut up. 

I want someone to honestly say they are proud of me, and give no other statements, no "but" added on. 

I just want someone to say "Well done, my good and faithful servant."