Fragmented Reality

Trauma has been a natural part of my life for as long as I remember, but I never would've called it trauma. It felt "normal" to me and I was still young when I became used to repeated traumatic experiences, although that didn't make it feel any better. I internalised the trauma and it is still very deep set in me today and recovery is long, slow and painful.

One of the biggest ways that PTSD impacts on my life is with my sleep, but not in the typical way of struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep. I experienced nightmares a lot as a child, and would often sleepwalk to the horror of my parents who once found me about to throw myself down the stairs in a nocturnal trance at 10 years old. The nightmares would get worse when things like bullying at school were worse and although I was always fairly vocal about how scary the nightmares were I was generally assured that they would go away as I grew up.

I wish they had.

As an adult, I still experience nightmares, or possibly night terrors, every single night. It has been years since I had a nightmare-free sleep and truthfully I can't really remember when that was. Traumatic events were more spaced out when I was younger, but when I moved away to start university I had several experiences in short succession followed by a fairly long (to me at the time) relationship with someone who was controlling and manipulative. It was somewhere between the age of 19 and 21 (so about 3 to 5 years ago) that the visits to Nightmare Land became a daily experience.

I don't feel that adult nightmares and night terrors are discussed enough nor are they taken seriously by mental health professionals in my opinion, even though they make me question my reality, my history and my experiences every night and day. I exist in a cycle of doubting my memories, revisiting them and the shame and guilt that comes with it, and

Generally my trauma can be split into time periods rather than incidents, as my trauma was generally ongoing experiences than specific events. My early childhood and primary school was where I first noticed I was different and the bullying began and a time when my parents resorted to nasty humiliation tactics to try and emotionally beat the sensitive autistic child out of me. Secondary school seemed like a fresh start, a new hope, but that didn't last long. Bullying started again and became more violent as we grew older. I experienced sexual assault for the first time within weeks of starting secondary school and in between year 8 and year 9 I got into my first "relationship" with a boy adult several years older, who pressured me into sex and drugs with violence as the punishment if I resisted. At the same time boys in my year had begun groping me and harassing me, often in front of witnesses who told me that I should be lucky that boys were even paying attention to me. By 14 I had already had enough. Nothing worse could happen, right?

Wrong.

The later years of secondary school saw continued bullying that left me isolated and ostracised. Granted looking back my social skills were weak (hello undiagnosed autism) but I never felt like any of the other kids gave me a chance - they were so quick to see me as "weird" and the best case scenario socially was that someone would pretend to be my friend for a few weeks or months until they got bored and would suddenly turn to being nasty. I was the punchline to so many jokes and my self esteem wasn't just low - it never existed. I hated every part of me to my core - there was obviously something horribly wrong with me. I felt defective. No one ever really stood up for me, except for a couple of occasions but it never really worked. After a brief dalliance with drugs with my first "boyfriend" I coped without drugs and alcohol for a few years, but at about 15 I began stealing alcohol from my parents and would get blackout drunk to forget everything. At this point I could feel the hatred from my parents, especially my mum who couldn't stand that I'd dare to be mentally ill and not even have the audacity to hide it away from the world. I couldn't hide it anymore. It was too painful. It was too loud.

University, just like secondary school, seemed like the perfect opportunity for a fresh start (I have now realised that "fresh starts" don't really work). In rapid succession I experienced rape, alcohol abuse, and an abusive relationship before my first semester had even ended. I was so lost and the mental health services didn't care, no matter how much I begged for help in hospital for the 100th time that year. I was constantly attempting suicide and self harming, but that only made the manipulation from my then-partner worse. I was convinced I didn't deserve to be alive - I was a waste of resources, as my then-partner told me. I was a strain on everyone. All I did was cause harm - these people were only hurting me because I deserved it. I felt like I needed to be punished. For what? I'm not sure. My drug and alcohol use continued to worsen over the next couple of years and at 21 I was taking ketamine every day to escape. I was lucky that I met my current boyfriend not long after and without his support I'm not sure I would've gotten sober, at least not then. For about 18 months between relationships, I partied heavily and became very reckless. The sexual trauma made me hypersexual, which only made people believe me even less, and put me in dangerous situations that often ended worse than the situations I was trying to avoid remembering.

As a result, the nightmares are usually very fragmented and jumbled up. For example, I might be experiencing a trauma from primary school but it is being carried out by people from university, or I might be experiencing a trauma that happened at university being carried out by primary school peers. On waking, my reality is heavily distorted. My energy levels are low. I am not sure if I am really alive - perhaps I am in some kind of purgatory? Or hell. It definitely feels possible in those first minutes of the morning. Sometimes it can take a few hours before I can settle and accept that this *is* real - the nightmares were not. They are so hyper-realistic when I am in them that it genuinely does seem like I am there. They say time travel isn't possible, but to my mind it is. I travel back in time every night to some of the worst days of my life, and then can't even tell when I'm back in reality. Time passes differently in Nightmare Land and an 8 hour sleep can feel like weeks, months, sometimes years. Waking up is even more confusing when years pass as it can take a short while before I remember the previous couple of days. It is like the years-long nightmare has overwritten my real memories. The day is already lost at that point - I can't shake the unsettling feeling that my reality isn't reality at all.

Sometimes the nightmares leave a physical mark on my day, often waking up in pain. Nightmares heavily focusing on sexual trauma usually wake me in pelvic pain so similar to the pain I experienced in the real event, if I am dreaming of fighting or pushing someone away I might wake with pain in my arms, and I often scratch myself so badly I wake up bleeding. Eve with all this, I struggle to get taken seriously - nightmares are associated with children and when bringing them up to medical professionals I have had laughter, snide derision and flat out disbelief. As a 24 year old adult I am still told I will "grow out of it", despite them getting consistently worse.

How do you handle that your reality is reliving every traumatic and adverse experience every time you fall asleep? It is frustrating when you are met with advice like "mindfulness techniques before bed" or "listen to a meditation" and then when they don't work you are treated like you just aren't trying hard enough. I practice good sleep hygiene, I feel safe when I sleep with my loving boyfriend next to me, I meditate and practice mindfulness frequently, I keep lavender by my bedside and take supplements like 5-HTP to attempt to regulate my sleep more... But they are still there. Like a resistant bacterial strain, PTSD night terrors are stubborn and almost spiteful every time they feel the need to remind you, yet again, that your life so far has mostly been filled with trauma.

Every so often I get the opposite - a lovely dream of the people associated with these traumas taking care of me, perhaps an abusive boyfriend being a perfect boyfriend or spending time with a nurturing and genuine version of my mother, and then in the last few minutes before waking I’m shown every bad thing they did to me. Almost feels like I am being tortured by my subconscious, bringing me back to the deeply ingrained fundamental belief that I deserve everything I have been given.

~~Thank you for reading and supporting my writing. Writing has become cathartic and valuable to recovery and anyone going through a similar situation I am always here for you~~