Sweet dreams
Trigger warning: death, abuse, domestic violence.
What do you dream about?
I don't always dream, and when I do I usually forget it immediately after waking. The ones I don't forget are the ones created by my PTSD.
I think the saddest thing about these dreams is that they don't scare me anymore.
I wake up alone with no one to talk to, and even if I had a therapist they'd be asleep at 5 AM, and I pull the covers up and try to sleep and try not to sleep, because I'm tired but I'd rather be groggy than have another dream where someone I love and am trying to trust more threatens to kill someone else I love. I'd rather need a nap tomorrow than have another dream that I know is a fantasy created by my brain except all of it is lifted from my experience. And how do I tell anyone these dreams, when doing so will hurt the other people I'm dreaming about?
I cannot be objective about the reality of my past. I have concluded that I was a difficult child, but the punishments I received were often more harsh than was deserved. This sounds perfectly reasonable, but I'm still so scared I'm lying without knowing it.
The dreams take the volatile, unreasonable nature of the punishments and don't really make them any worse, just a little less believable. Perhaps. Five years ago, I would have believed in a reality where my computer and all of my bedding would have been taken away from me because 22-year-old me was looking at my computer while I was in bed. I would also have believed the ensuing escalation and threats of violence.
How do I heal, forgive, move on when these images are in my head and they won't go away?
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I am home at the end of the summer, and C is there, even though they won't be at the end of this summer. I'm making dinner? Tiny tiny pancakes that I have to flatten with the tines of a fork? E and A are out, but I'm still to make some for E, who is being difficult about whether they want flour or banana in theirs.
I make the pancakes, two for C, two for E, and I don't actually end up making any for myself, because it's bedtime. Why C and I, at 20 and 22, have a bedtime is not a question I ask. After all, we're not in the house we currently live in; we're in the house we lived in for eight years starting when I was ten.
I'm not allowed to look at my computer while I'm in bed. Maybe I'm not even allowed to have it charging in the bedroom that C and I share. C volunteers to help me smuggle it in, and I agree even though I know I shouldn't.
I am hiding crouched behind my bedframe when E finds C. But C has already given me the computer and its charger! No matter; E is furious. They're not actually angry at C, just at me, which lifts some of the guilt. C starts trying to defend me, then A comes and does the same, and I'm still behind the bed shaking, except I can also see everything that's happening.
Evidently my brain won't compute to make E hit anything or anyone, so it settles for E threatening to kill, variously, A and me. And that's when I force myself to wake up and type this, even though my eyelids are heavy and my body screams for the void of slumber. I don't know how to be my own therapist, but that doesn't mean I won't try. Also, something about pillows.