I’m So Tired

Can’t sleep.

Nope. I’m lying.

I could sleep. It’d take me a couple of hours but I’d eventually get there.

The truth?

I’m afraid to go to sleep.

Sounds almost silly, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I had a few nightmares when I was younger but few were truly bad. Usually involving crocodiles and snakes or people I know being put into foster care. Now though, it seems as an adult my nightmares have grown along with me.

Pets, friends, and family dying. The smell of burning flesh. The boom in my ears as a car crashes and the leaden feeling in my limbs as I try to stop us from falling further back. Great towers all aflame falling onto people, the heat on my face. People happily allowing themselves to be electrocuted. Waking up to find my beloved unbreathing or my cat still on the floor. Finding myself trapped, alone, or being hunted.

I wake up wanting to cry and vomit. Often both.

So vivid. Always with just enough truth to pull the acid up from my stomach, sometimes revealing things I had forgotten, sometimes forcing my focus to thoughts I can’t think in the waking world, and always playing on my deepest fears:

I’m going to be alone. I’ll be betrayed. They’re leave. They’ll be taken. I have no control. I can’t feel love. My soul is dying.

It rips me apart and while I know I can survive it- have survived it for so long, I’m awfully tired of it being normal for me.

I’m tired of waking up every four hours or so- a compulsion I can’t control, to make sure everyone is still there and breathing, that I haven’t been left alone. I’m tired of having to make myself go to bed. I’m tired of laying there, unwilling to let my mind shut off even when I want it to because I know what comes next. I’m tired of finding myself caught up in another world far too real to my senses. I’m tired of feeling dread. I’m tired of jerking awake and forcing the contents of my stomach to still. I’m tired of laying there with a pounding heart afterwards and boycotting any form of sleep or idle thought for the rest of the day.

I’m tired of repeating it all the next night.

And the next.

I’m tired.

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