Charming

My Chaotic Life
2016-11-28 12:44:50 (UTC)

Wish I Could Sleep

I wish I could sleep like a "normal" person. I have had sleep issues since I was a child. As a child, staying awake all night was for safety reasons. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I did not have your "typical" childhood. My childhood was filled with chaos, screaming, beatings, torture, and lots of pretending everything was ok. Often I would go to bed not knowing if I was going to wake up in the morning. The chaos in my home was so think, it was smothering, like a tight winter sweater. My parents had a love-hate issue, when they loved each other, I was beaten less, but when they hated each other, the beatings were all day long. Most nights, my mother would sleep with a butcher knife and dare my dad to come into their bedroom. My dad would sleep on the loveseat in the living room with a loaded pearl-handled pistol. Do you know what it's like to lay in bed awake all night, wondering when you are going to get killed in your sleep? What happened to me in my childhood carried over into my adulthood. I have a REM sleep disorder. That means the part of your brain that paralyzes your body so you can sleep doesn't work in me. I lash out in my sleep, kicking in my sleep, screaming in my sleep, I even leap out of bed and hit the floor in my sleep. Luckily I have a loving husband, because I have even hit him before in my sleep. I felt so horrible when that happened. I also constantly wake up, sometimes every 15 minutes all through the night. Often I get up at one o'clock A.M. and stay up the rest of the day. This is after going to bed at midnight. People that get a full 8 hours of sleep each night, I truly envy you.




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