Do I go out just to avoid sleeping?

I have found myself lately going out a lot more than I used to...at first I think this was from coming off the medicine and finally actually being awake at night and wanting to do stuff. But steadily I'm finding myself going out when I'm really not in the mood because I feel that it's better than the alternative which is sleeping with which comes dreaming. I can only distract myself for so long though, eventually I will need to sleep. That, sadly, is inevitable every night. 

Poem about nightmare disorder

A poem I found on Instagram which describes nightmare disorder really well

It's always the same but never alike

Things you'd not believe appear every night

Only barely human, nearly morphed into a beast

Or disfigured faces that upon your fear feast

No telling what shows next, no thing of flesh or bone

Stirring in the shadows, I'm no longer safe at home

This anticipation has me fearing sleep

For what ever happens

They'll find me in my dream

The Choice

Each night I have two decisions, exhaustion or hell.  Hell would be sleep, because that's what my nightmares are. And with sleep, the nightmares will come. Each night I make that decision but sadly I can't go through a night without sleep, so it always ends up back in hell. I guess I just decide how much hell I'm willing to go through, the trade off being exhausted the next day. I really feel like an early night tonight cos I have to be up early for a birthday thing tomorrow. So some extra hell I guess. Thinking I may set my alarm for 4am to knock off my REM sleep cycle. Oh the joys of having this I curable disease. 

The Australian airplane disaster

When I first woke up this morning it took me about 5 minutes to remember my dream and when I did, I just started sobbing uncontrollably and have been for the last hour. 

I dreamed that I was in Australia visiting friends when we were standing out in the Sydney harbour and a plane started coming down very low.  It knocked on a lap post and you could see that the pilot was trying to get control of the plane but he couldn't. Then, the plane went down into the water and just three people came to the surface, the rest were all dead.  One of the survivors told me I should deep see dive to go help save the other people so I did, only for one of the corpses to rape me.

I miss you

This probably isn't really a nightmare but this morning I've woken up feeling really really sad. In September 2013, my best friend of 2 years, with who I did everything and shared everything, decided to stop talking to me completely out of the blue and has never given me an explanation as to why. It has really knocked me emotionally because I have no idea why she did it and I lost my best friend overnight, as well as her little one year old son. 

So last night I dreamed that I went to the super market and bumped into her and her boyfriend, who I was also really good friends with.  We spoke for hours and she gave me some sort of explanation and then invited me over for a braai at her house.  

So just feeling a little sad this morning that it wasn't real. But definitely better than having a nightmare!!

The Spiral

Having had this nightmare disorder now for going onto 3 years, and having tried every treatment in the book, I decided that I'll give the power of positive thinking a try.  I figured that if I make my days as amazing as possible, start going out more, doing fun things, enjoying my weekends and not going to work, that perhaps that positivity would filter through into my night times too.  It worked for about a week but now I've had 3 really bad nights and I feel myself slipping back into the spiral of as I get tired and start falling asleep, I wake myself up forcibly and start crying because I just want to sleep but I know what will happen if I do, and then I wake up really early, exhausted, but am too scared to go back to sleep.  Cos there are no maybes with my dreams anymore, I WILL have them and that's not negative thinking, that's reality.  I have been so exhausted at work this week and I feel myself slipping back into that spiral again but I am really trying very hard to stay on the positive path.  I have come to realise that by vocalising what this is doing to me, how it is killing me slowly, I am only losing friends, as they either don't care to hear it, or its too hard for them to hear because they can't do anything about it.  So this is an internal battle I need to fight.  This is my mental war to fight, no one elses.  When it gets me down, I need to deal with it in my own head, not expect others to sympathise.  When I feel suicidal I need to work through that on my own, because I won't feel like that forever and its not okay to put that kind of stress on my friends and family.  The so called rule as well that if you tell a professional that you are suicidal and they have to do something is also bolox, as I told my therapist, my psychiatrist and my TRE practicioner and none had much of a reaction, much less did something about it.  They say you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option you have, well that's too dam true.  One thing this journey has taught me is that I am dam strong for coming out the other end, being knocked down with dissapointments tons of times and I keep picking myself up and forging ahead, still running a successful business at the same time.  This post may not make much sense but I had the need to blot some thoughts down.  I can do this.  Even though I am petrified of what tonight holds, and realistically, it isn't going to be good, but I can do it.  I will wake up on the other side.  I will get through another day.  Just one day at a time.

The Rape Dream

So I wondered how long it would be until I had a rape dream...I have already had the horrific one of watching the little child get raped...well after a weekend away at a music festival with friends and having a great relaxing time I didn't think that that would be the night because I went to bed really happy.  It was so horrific I don't even feel I want to go into details now, I may come and edit the page at a later stage.  But wow, getting raped in some kind of 'classroom' environment with all sorts of people (some familiar, some not) watching has to be high up on the list of worst dreams.

C & M - how dare they torture my friends

Trapped...2 of my beautiful friends who mean everything and more to me we trapped in a township. The only way out was by climbing through an electric fence. When I hesitanted saying they should (I did so cos I've been electrocuted previous times in dreams) then my friends each got strapped into a toture device and I was forced to listen and watch.  The torment on their faces, I can't easily forget that. I don't know what else to say about this dream because it was soooo fucked up. And the horror to look at what they went through.  I just want to protect him now. 

How do they hurt them, and I do everything I can to protect her everyday and in my dream life I cannot do it now I feel let them down even when it isn't real.

The neurologist

I returned to the sleep doctor about a month and half ago, and when I told him that I was occasionally losing control of my bowels during these nightmares, he suggested I go and see a neurologist so I made an appointment to see one in one months time.  The night before I went to see him, I had a horrific night, one of my worst in ages so I was not even vaguely on function mode when I got to him.  I tried hard to give him the history of all the tests I'd had but I was so exhausted, physically from the night before and emotionally from how many times I had told this story before. He looked at my EEG and said whilst he saw an abnormality on one of the brain waves, it was not definately epileptic so he suggested an overnight 24 EEG with video monitoring.  I was very distressed about having this again as I found the 24 sleep study extremely traumatic.  I just decided to do what I had to do thought and booked the EEG for two days ahead. 

On the Friday I booked myself into the hospital and went to get wired up.  Whilst they were glueing the electrodes to my head I just cried and cried.  I had no idea why I was being such a baby but the tears would not stop coming.  Once I had all the wires on, which pulled horribly on my skin and itched like crazy, I just lay on my bed and starred into space for hours, wishing time away and wishing I could be anywhere but in that hospital.  I eventually went to sleep around midnight but at 5:30am I was woken by a tea lady who wanted to know what my order was for breakfast.  I was so angry, as I was in the middle of a nightmare when this moron of a woman came and woke me up that I was too mad to go back to sleep.  I then lost it.  I hid under my blanket and just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.  I knew what was going to happen now, all that would happen was that the doctor would call me in two days time and tell me I'm fine and there is nothing wrong with me.  And I would be back to square one and still living with this horror every single night.  And that is exactually what happened.  I got the call on the Tuesday and he said there was no evidence whatsoever of any abnormalities in my brain.  I remained calm when I got the phone call but when I went home all hell broke lose.  I just wept and threw things around my flat.  I opened my drawer with all my medication in it and stared at it for about 2 hours.  I wanted to die.  I had no desire whatsoever to continue to live like this any longer.  These suicidal thoughts continued to the next day and I realised that I had to options, re-admit myself to the clinic or get the hell away from Cape Town and my pills to keep myself out of danger of doing something stupid.  So I booked myself flights to Johannesburg. Something I really could I'll afford but I didn't feel like I had much option.  

Once I got to Joburg, I landed only to find out that 2 of my staff had resigned and a guest had taken it upon himself to shoot up heroin in our bathroom and pass out, leading my manager to walk in on him not knowing if he was alive or dead.  Things calmed down after that and I have now relaxed and am recovering a bit from everything that was last week, but I'm worried about next week and what will happen.  Whether I will come home, take one look at my bed and have my nightly breakdown or whether this trip will have rejuvenated me a bit.  Every test or treatment that I try feels like such a huge deal at the time and I keep making the mistake of allowing it to suck everything out of my physically, mentally and emotionally. When each test or treatment is actually such a small drop in the ocean of the bigger picture of everything that I have gone through. 

So where to from here?  I really don't know.  But I will just keep on taking it one step at a time as that's all that I know how to do.

Coming off the meds

I decided about three weeks ago that I would be stopping all my psychiatric medication as it was costing a fortune and not helping at all. I feel like I gave it enough time and belief and it was the right time to stop it. I tapered off the medicine slowly as advised by the sleep therapist (I did not receive a response to my email to my psychiatrist).  Whilst lowering the daily dosage I was fine, I didn't feel any side effects at all.  I was meant to wean for another week but on Friday I ended up sleeping at a friends house and didn't have my medicine with me so on Saturday I figured since I didn't take it the night before I may as well stop.  Sunday was okay but Monday...oh wow! I had the worst mood swings ever, I was literally raging like a bull. I had tingling feelings going up and down my body every couple of minutes, light headedness, dizzy, nauseous. The list goes on. I got into my car on Monday evening and just burst into tears. I wished I could be dead, I cried for death to come. I was sleeping at a friends house half an hour away and bawled my eyes out the whole way there. The symptom of withdrawl have eased very slightly but at least the mood swings have subsided.  The physical withdrawl is very intense though and I hope it begins to improve soon.