Can't Sleep

"As I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." That's the bedtime prayer I grew up saying before I go to bed for as long as I could remember.

Now it's more along the lines of "Please Lord, let me make it through the night without a dream...without a memory flash back. Just please Lord let me make it through this night without feeling like I'm crazy."

With that prayer, most nights I get only 3-4 hours of sleep...which is just enough to survive, and just little enough not to go into REM sleep (which is when you hit the dream state)...but that's only most nights. There are those few nights that I fall asleep earlier than expected and before I know it, the flood gates are opened...it's anything from flashes of memories to full memories...I feel his hands on me, in me...I can smell his filth, his sweat...I can hear his voice whispering threats of physical pain and even death...I want to wake up but I can't....I want to hide but this time I can't...my mind and body are against me, they make me re-live it all. I'm forced to re-live whatever twisted memory my mind and body decide I have to re-live; I feel, smell, hear (sometimes) the entire event. The only thing that makes things "feel normal" again is once I wake up I take a hot shower (I set the water as hot as I think I can handle it and then take it a notch hotter) and I scrub the feeling of being filthy off...head to toe I have to be clean...Once done I bottle it all back up, put a smile on my face, and put on my normal show of like is good and nothing is wrong. Thankfully no one has managed to see through my serenade of life being peachy keen...no one's seen through my smiling mask...no one sees the real me.

Night before my birthday, I got a full night's sleep...I hated it. My birthday was supposed to be a "happy" day. But instead it was a hard day. The only thing I could think of is how dirty, how filthy I felt. I got the typical "Happy Birthday" phone calls from family and FB posts from family and friends wishing me a happy birthday. This entire time I was having to wear my mask of everything being okay and nothing was wrong. Right when I got the chance to relax and not have to worry about what mask I wore, my mom called to wish me "Happy Birthday"....it was too hard to hide from her. I finally broke down, I did manage to hide the why I was crying...I told her that it was because I missed her and the rest of my family (plausible excuse considering it's been 2+ years since I'd been down there). I still bottle everything up...and I'll continue to do that, until the bottle starts to over flow and I can't keep it in any longer. When that time comes I'll pull out whatever mask is suiting for the moment and pray that it doesn't "fall off"...

...I fear though that, that time may be coming sooner then expected....

I don't know how, but last night in the 3-4 hours of sleep I got I somehow went into full REM sleep. It was almost the same dream except more intense, I could feel his hand against my chest holding me down...I could feel him on me, inside me...his breathing on me, him telling me how I was a "good girl"....I wanted to wake up and make it all go away....I wanted to scream to make him stop...I wanted to cry because of the pain....but all I could do was lay there.

I need to escape...
I need to run away....
I need to feel...

But I can't.