I'm not sure what time I laid down yesterday, but I would guess around 3:30 or 4:00, I don't think I was up past 5:00 or 6:00, but I might have been. I was expecting to be awake during the night, while I did wake up for a short period of time, I was able to go back to sleep until it was closer to the time I felt like I should be getting up for the day. Today my friend stopped by, she was in the area, sent me a text, and asked if she could invite herself over which I said sounded like fun. We covered a lot of ground while she was here, but the majority of it is for another day. We were talking about sleep, and I told her I was afraid to go to sleep at night. Not that I'm afraid of the dark per se, the darkness doesn't really bother me, it's the whole idea that I have to lay down and abandon any pretense of being in control or able to protect myself.
She kind of looked at me and told me that I had never shared that before. I was kind of surprised since I felt like I had, she said that I had mentioned having trouble sleeping, and not liking to take things for it, but she had assumed it was an insomnia type condition, not one associated with the overwhelming consuming terror and dread that I feel whenever I know I have to go to sleep. Yesterday it took me a long time to actually fall asleep. I pretended I was my own parent, but not like the parents I had in real life. I told myself that I was tired and needed sleep, and here was an opportunity to get some. It was the rest I needed, but apparently not enough because once again I was crying because I hadn't gotten enough of it over the past however many hours. Probably the biggest difference was the sense of calm I felt as I laid there. I made myself just stay there until I drifted off into dreamland.
I'm going to talk to my therapist about this because I can't remember a time where this wasn't an issue. I always feared going to sleep and fought the bedtime routine as a result. Today (as in these days) I have an elaborate ritual that I try to follow, but the fear remains. I don't think anything really bad happened to me, but maybe it did and that's why I have these issues so many years later. My family makes jokes about me not being able to sleep through the night, they're not funny to me. I can remember being very young and absolutely terrified that something bad was going to happen if I allowed myself to close my eyes at night. I can't remember anything particularly horrifying happening, but this feeling is so strong and persistant that I can't just set it aside. My friend was very kind to me about this and I'm grateful for that. She said I need to get to the bottom of this, it's the last thing I feel like writing about today, but this is important to me.
All my best,
Jess
P.S. Even talking about it and writing this bring up the feeling. I wish it would just go away on its own, but I doubt it will so I guess this is a new area for me to explore no matter how scary it seems right now.
j