Nightmares

Monday, February 26, 2024 - 11:38 PM

-_- Nightmares again last night. They were...they were different than normal, not in content but in how much I forgot I was dreaming. I almost always sleep lightly enough to know I'm still just asleep, but this time...I completely lost touch with my waking memories.

Ever since I finally escaped my abusive family (it'll be three years in April!), my nightmares have all, with maybe exactly one exception, been about being stuck back with them. As time has passed, my nightmare narrative has gradually transitioned from never having left but still trying, to having been forced to return due to financial hardship, and for my mates and I working to reunite.

Last night was different.

Something bad had happened, I didn't know what. I was damaged, and trying to recover. And I was living with my parents. But I didn't have the ability to connect to my real memories at all. I didn't have my fire, my passion, the things I protect myself with. I was just the grateful little girl they tried to abuse me into staying. I was cheerful, chirpy, and affectionate--again, not anything I'm actually not...but something I've emphatically not been to my abusers for over a decade. But I was.

Once the dream lightened, I asserted some control over the narrative, remembered my mates, and was able to realize they'd be out there, waiting for me to be able to go to them. And that I was trapped, but that I could fight. That I needed to fight.

Because the scary part was that I'd forgot.

I can know why this nightmare happened. It's been a long, hard week of work where I've covered for people the company is too cheap to hire and taken on more days than I should, been stuck doing only the parts of my job that I don't like. This is after a move two weeks ago we still haven't quite settled in from, and my partners have been out of town the past few days and only return later tonight. I'm tired, I miss them, and I'm lonely. I get that. That unmoored feeling of insecurity is a perfect catalyst for nightmares.

I'm still shook by the experience. I didn't have any separation from the nightmare. I didn't even realize it was bad for a long, long time. That nightmare muffled me, it took my fight away, and made me hug and dote on the people who hurt me, over and over, for my whole life. Once the dream lightened, and I started to remember, I was still in there, and it still felt so real, and I could see how they had been holding themselves, drawing me in, expecting this to be permanent. I finally started to feel my fire again, finally started to be able to get angry, as they tried to stomp that down. The dream and I came to a crest, we were about to go to some meaningless Important Event, and I couldn't hide my feelings, so they pushed and pushed to get that happy chirpiness back, and I burst out with things as I do now. "I understand we can't do this now, this is for later, but why do you do these things?"

I started actually talking about things that were wrong, a thing I'd given up on when I was...chaos, I was gonna say actually 15, but what? 12? I dunno. It had never helped, just got me hurt. So I stopped trying, knew it wasn't safe, and had it burst out from time to time unbidden. Which naturally went poorly. So yeah, I guess not much change. Just how I didn't feel the same weight over it.