Tag Archives: nightmare

Trying to Have No Feelings…

I was in Newport this week. I spent a couple of nights at my favorite place. I had one small panic attack – being so far from home. But it was a very nice trip… I read “Goblet of Fire”.

I come home, and have to resume my “normal” life. I don’t really know whether going helps in the long run. But I am not going to worry about that now. The time for that will be before the next trip.

I had some depression earlier today. I can feel it near.

It gets so hard to keep trying to push it away. It’s either that or fighting anxiety. Nice combination.

Everyone has situational anxiety… I am talking about chronic anxiety. Anxiety that exists for no reason. It just is.

My thoughts are kind of meandering. I don’t know how I feel. There are things I need to be doing, but I have no energy.

There is no TGIF

I have struggled thru my life on my own.  Every day is the same – take care of the house, the cats, the bills, and maybe myself.  There are not any days off.  Even on the weekends, the expectation is that I will work on the same things.  There is no break in it.

I can’t even go out my front door without planning, and dealing with anxiety.  My every move to governed by errors in my brain chemistry.  And I have been learning about dealing with it.  It takes constant effort.  I have to fight back the anxiety… and constantly remind myself to avoid depression – if I can.  I have got better at it.

The day to day things… the mundane… the normal parts of life, become nightmares sometimes.  It is all I can do to make it thru the day.  And often I do not.  Several times a week I can not fight it anymore, and have to go to bed and hide my mind.

That makes it difficult to keep going the same way on the weekends as well.  There is never a break – except now I can get away, and go to Newport.  Once a month or so, I get a couple of days to recover.  It is very welcome, though not enough.

I know people have struggles at work… in school… and with other aspects of their lives.  And everyone needs a break.  My struggles are always around me.  I do not get to go home from work for the night, or the weekend.  I do not get to finish my homework, and rest.  There are no final exams.  There is never any true rest… there is only better control.

Some of you will understand.  We live every moment within our nightmare.  It is all around us.  We take it with us.  There is no TGIF.

With Nights Like This, Who Needs Enemas?

Another really bad night.  There is nothing new here… I have a lot of bad nights sleeping.  I have those long nightmares that build up.  I wake up a lot, but the same nightmare picks right back up when I go to sleep.  They go on for hours!

I know I could get up, and do something for a while – that usually breaks the dream.  But then I have to think of something worth getting up for!  The anxiety stops me pretty quickly.  I fall back asleep.

My nightmares?  They almost always involved teaching, even though I retired 13 years ago!!  I might be subbing where I taught – it’s over a 2 hour commute.  Or I am teaching something I have no real training for… or I am just plain doing a horrible job.  Whatever it is, everything goes wrong and it’s all my fault.

Whatever the nightmare is about, I finally get up literally shaking (yes, literally).  It takes hours to calm down.  And it drains so much from me it will be a drag on my energies all day.  Fun times…

There is nothing to do about it… I just have to wait it out.  I should feel better this evening.  Unfortunately, these usually happen 3 or 4 nights a week, so tonight may not be much better.  Though with Lori coming home tomorrow, the odds are in my favor for avoiding the nightmares tonight.

Wish me luck!!  And yes the title is a bad joke.

Thinking About Where I Am

So here I am, half way thru the weekend.  I have slept about “normally” – at least for me.  I have been awakened by nightmares several times each night… average.  I have had too much anxiety… about average.  And I am wondering what it means to be “happy”.  I wonder about that a lot.

Most of the time I am just waiting for the day to end so I can go to bed.  Of course that will lead to nightmares… I don’t know which is worse.  Actually, I do.  The being up and awake is worse.  Because it is real.

There are things I do… mostly things that have to get done.  Other that those, most of my time is just trying to hold things together.  I am often on the verge of tears.  I can’t be happy, and do fun things.  I just need to get thru the day.

Motivation is a huge problem – I don’t have any personal motivation.  I can shop… clean (some)… and do the basic things to take care of myself.  But I have to be alone.  Not just by myself, but alone.  I can not have close friends.  The closest I get are my Facebook friends.  I can not socialize with others.

It’s okay… at least I am able to stick around. 

So being asleep is the best thing – even with the nightmares.  Being awake and alone is my next best state.  Going out to run errands is tolerable about half the time – sometimes Lori has to do the shopping because I can not go out.  Going out with friends, or having friends over are just out of the question.

“Alone” means more than being by myself.  I can not even do things for myself.  I can not hobby (which is not a verb, but used as one here), or work on my things.  These are the normal days.

There are good days too.  I have even gone out of photo shoots by myself!  I have worked on projects, and hobbies.  But those are the exceptional days.  Depression is not as common as it used to be.  Things are even worse when I am depressed.  It will get better… we do always end up getting better. 

Nightmares

I frequently have terrible nightmares, that leave my shaken, and shaking for hours.  It happened last night.  Usually my nightmares are about my life… often for some reason I have had to go back to high school, and graduate again.  I of course struggle, and am sometimes trying to teach as well.

My most common nightmare is about teaching – especially about having to teach classes I know nothing about.  And/or being totally unprepared for the classes I know.  These dreams go back to when I was teaching – especially bad during the weeks before school opened in September.  I have had problems with all kinds of nightmares for over 30 years.

Last night’s was very unusual – it was about observing an alien invasion of Earth.  I was in a position to affect who would be allowed to live.  Enough said.  I can get over the unusual nightmares more easily than the ones about teaching.  In those I am always a failure, with many people pointing it out to me.

They usually occur right before it’s time to get up, so I remember them especially well.  And I wake up during the nightmare, and fall back asleep resuming right where I left off.  Sometimes I dream I have woken up, and real life gets mixed into the nightmare.  There are times when I am not sure if I am awake, or still dreaming.

It’s not fun.  I am a med that for a while helped, but I guess my brain got accustomed to it, and it no longer helps.  So I just have to deal with it.  Fun…

Not a Good Day

There are good days and bad… today is a bad day.  I had nightmares all night, but still stayed in bed late this morning.  I would rather have the nightmares than get up and have to deal with the world.

We went out to IKEA yesterday, and it wore me out.  I had lots of pain, and was not able to deal with it.  I was not doing very well last evening, and it carried over into the night, and this morning.

I know I will feel better soon… but it is not now.  There are things to do, but my toes, back, and knee don’t want to get up at all.  I can’t do much walking without having these pains, and I am still trying to figure out the best combination of meds to treat it.

It drags me down mentally, and leaves me tired, and feeling like staying in bed.  Right now I wish I had stayed there.  There is not much more to say today…