part 49

So, yeah these most recent memories have been really bad. I am finally able to sleep again after two weeks of waking up in the middle of the night feeling all twinge-y and like my muscles were trying to push themselves out of my body through my pores.

I didn’t even think about that twinge-y stuff happening in relation to the recent memories until I mentioned it in therapy, and my therapist (wonderful, brilliant woman – for realsies) suggested that the memories and the not sleeping could be associated. I think she is right, especially after I tried a new method of making the twinge-ing subside.

I started having these twinge-y episodes when I was a young teenager (as opposed to being an old teenager). I woke up in the middle of the night with my whole body feeling like it had to be ready to experience something intense, but not knowing what it was. It was very distressing then, and it is very distressing now. It is a very distressing feeling at any time.

My first thought upon waking up with this feeling is that I need to stretch my muscles with some sort of urgency, but each time I try to stretch my muscles out, they spring right back into that state of tension. And then I can’t stay awake and I can’t go to sleep. It is madness.

I have only had the twinge-y episodes really badly (that I am aware of) maybe four or five times since that first time when I was a kid. I had not figured out a way to resolve them – get them to stop – and think I eventually would just pass out from exhaustion.

Then when they started again this last time, they were driving me so crazy that I stopped thinking of how I could make them stop and started thinking of a way to get past them. I thought about how when I try to keep the flashbacks and memories from surfacing they get more urgent and more frightening. When I allow myself to just let them happen, those intrusive thoughts subside greatly, and I am able to move on with regular thoughts (like picking up the kids from school and stuff like that).

So I was going crazy in the middle of the night and I decided to see what would happen if I just quit fighting the twinge-ing and saw what happened. What happened is my whole body tensed up and started shaking. Not shaking like my hands shake a lot, but shaking like being on a rollercoaster. Oh my god it was awful.

But it only lasted a couple of minutes (which was a really long time to shake like that), and then I fell right to sleep.

I don’t remember having any specific memories in my mind that time, but my body apparently was going through a lot.

The next time I was woken up by the twinge-y things, it took me a minute or two to remember that I can let the body memories come out, and then they would stop. My very first instinct is to fight the twinge-y feelings back, and it is kind of scary just letting them happen.

It is also really annoying – it is just all around a very uncomfortable sensation. I hate it.

Anyway, this next time I was woken up by these things, I tried to just let them work themselves out, and I did feel a little better, but they kept happening and I was up half the night.

The thing about letting them happen is that it is physically and emotionally exhausting, and while the physical part kind of goes on by itself, I just get so tired emotionally that I am hardly conscious, but they still happen.

Another thing about letting them happen is that I am terribly self-conscious about it. I cannot handle the idea of anyone seeing me go through this, or even being aware of it while it is happening. For some reason that is more terrifying that anything else.

Since I sleep in the same bed as Jonny, and the twinge-y things kept happening, I started going back to trying to stretch and fight them so I didn’t wake him up with all of the violent shaking. This did not go over well, and anticipating another night of tortuous twinge-ing, I was beginning to be afraid of even going to sleep at all. Between the twinge-ing waking me up and the fear of going to sleep at all, I have pretty much not been able to sleep.

Not sleeping for one night makes my body very tired, but not being able to sleep the night after that, and then the night after that, it really affects my mind as well.

I am proud to say that during this last bout of sleeplessness, I have been able to stay grounded. I was still able to breathe in the beautiful air and look at the beautiful sky and know they were beautiful. I wasn’t completely consumed with distress as I am used to being when I get too tired.

After about two weeks of this, though, I just didn’t know what to do. One night I got woken up by the twinges at about three in the morning. I got my laptop and went downstairs and lay down on the couch and played solitaire. When the twinges would get really bad, I would stop playing solitaire and let the shaking happen.

It was horrible. Really, really horrible.

It hurt my heart on some level I had not been aware of before then.

When I was going in for my C-section with Jonah, I got the epidural and then they laid me on my back and strapped my arms down straight out to my sides, like I was lying on a cross. I began feeling this very bad feeling up my left arm and pressing on my heart. It was felt very heavy and dull and painful all over my whole chest and head. I wanted to ask the nurse to do something, but I was shocked at how much the feeling affected my ability to do anything at all.

I was finally able to alert a nurse that I was not doing well – I didn’t think I was going to die, but I believed (and still do) that the way I was feeling was what it feels like when a body is dying.

Anyway, the nurse fiddled with something and I suddenly felt about a thousand times better, and went on to have my baby.

But that dying feeling stayed with me.

At that time, I had not yet begun the process of remembering the things I had blocked out about my dad. I remember distinctly thinking, “wow, that must be what it feels like to have a heart attack.” I did a note-to-self in my head and tucked that feeling away with the association to death and heart attacks so that if I ever felt it again I would be able to recognize it immediately and be sure to work hard to get medical attention.

So that dying feeling is what those violent shakes a few nights ago on the couch felt like. I felt like a freak – my whole body was spazzing out, like the way someone having a seizure is portrayed in a movie. I was very aware of what was happening and it was like a dam broke in my mind and let all the bad pictures come into my head.

All of my carefully constructed filters of the past were temporarily disabled, and it was all just THERE. Oh my god – it really was horrible.

When the shaking and the KNOWING got to the point that I felt like something very important (I don’t know what, just that it is important) was going to break inside of me, I would start to focus on playing solitaire again. It was weird going back and forth between something so mundane and something so intense and frightening.

But it worked. After maybe an hour or so of these twinge-shake-solitaire cycles, I felt exhaustion in my body that was so comforting. It felt like all of that energy that was trapped in me was finally let out. The dam got plugged back up, the filters re-enabled, and I went to sleep.

Since then I have been woken up by the twinge-y thing once, but was able to fall back asleep before I even knew it.

I have had about three nights of solid sleep since then – it has been nice.

It is huge relief to know that I will most likely be able to get a regular reprieve from being conscious again tonight. Sleeping is awesome. I feel much better today.