Day 10: Insomnia

Had a sleep study performed this weekend and ironically I couldn't sleep. Go figure! My doctors are hoping to find a reasoning for the tremors that seem to come and go for no apparent reason (and sometimes with reason). Hypothesizing that it is the sleep pattern or lack there of that is creating this form of exhaustion.
Trouble is what do you do when the sleep study recreates some of your PTSD? Being hooked up to dozens of electrodes, beeps and alarms going off randomly, not being able to roll from side to side in search of comfort. The room is pitch black and disorientating, my only light coming from a red lazer beam shooting down from the ceiling. I hate the dark. It sends all my senses into overdrive. While I know there is no one else in the room with me something inside me is on high alert. I react to every sound, sensing every smell,as if someone is sneaking up on me. And I am supposed to relax and fall asleep?

When you have walk in fear, afraid that your attacker was looming in the darkness for years it is virtually impossible to find relaxation and comfort in the silence of darkness. While still in the violent relationship I would find myself in places like the local coffee shop, mall, movie theater, or my own home and suddenly he would appear. One afternoon I had been in my home with my father and a guest enjoying a baseball game on the television. It was a hot summer afternoon and the front door and windows were open letting in the sunshine. Suddenly, I received a text message from my assailant. "Go look outside" it read. I walked out my front door, just feet from where I had been sitting with my family enjoying the baseball game and what did I see....my car was covered in thorn covered roses. How did he do that when we all were just inside with the screen door and windows open? Surely I would have heard his car pull up or the activity outside...We all were oblivious to it all. Mixed in the roses was a not that read "each thorn pricked me and created pain just like the pain of you leaving me but I withstood the pain to be near you again". This was just the beginning of his stalking behaviors. Even at my most alert and surrounded by others I was vulnerable to him.

Needless to say I don't think my sleep study went to well. Rather than the clinic getting an accurate sleep study I am pretty sure they got a better account of a panic study. Waking and wanting to roll over only reminded me that I was hooked up to all these machines and I was stuck. My senses heightened again and again each time I woke. When I finally woke up for the day I was beyond exhausted, emotionally and physically. Now all I can do is wait and continue moving forward. As one of my favorite professors would write on all of my paper "onward and upward".