so i want to write this for my own therapy.. so that i can sleep.. so that i can stop feeling the way i have been... but i want to write it without guilt that it will make some of you sad or feel bad... it is what it is... and it's what i need to work out...
i don't sleep.. i can sleep.. believe you me. i CAN sleep... i can lay down for 4 hour naps and wake up ready for another round of sleep... i have fallen asleep in the bathtub... at the movies.. in school parking lots during lunch hour... i CAN sleep.. but sometimes. i won't.. i will myself to stay awake... completely terrified of what i am going to see when i close my eyes...
at night.. there is a stillness...at night it comes down to me and my thoughts... a battle almost... i literally shake my head NO.. i put on my war face and downright refuse to let them get the better of me...
the thing that i am avoiding so much as to drive myself to bite my fingernails till they are painful and bloody.. is my dad... i fight back tears but still feel them rolling into my ears.. hot.. i lose the battle every time... even with my eyes open starting out into darkness i see him... he is thin.. frail... he is scared too...
and that's what gets me... i am laying in bed fighting sleep the way he did every night... we would beg him to sleep and he wouldn't... and i know what he was afraid of... because i see them too.. i see all of the memories and things we work so hard to hide away in our minds.. i know what it feels like to not be able to stop them... and i know.. without a doubt that is what he was seeing... in his over 60 year of life,, i don't know all he had seen.. i don't know all that he had experienced.. but i know the bad stuff lurked... then came out at night...
my nightmares are made of seeing him small and sick on the recliner sleeping with his mouth open... but his hands and feet are twitching because i know he is having a morphine induced nightmare... or i see him hallucinating and seeing bungs on my aunts kitchen floor.. so afraid he is holding the wheels to his wheel chair so that i can't push him into the kitchen.. and all i told him was to not look down... i see him staring off into corners.. and i ignored it... i was so afraid to see my dad afraid that i blocked it all our... or at least tried to... i didn't comfort him... i didn't want to pity him.. i kept on trucking hoping that he would follow.. and he did...
and i feel so much guilt now.. i have so many "should of" thoughts left over.. i should have played games with him at night.. maybe took a walk around the block. anything to help keep his thoughts and hallucinations at bay.. and i didn't... so maybe it's my punishment to lay awake and try to cry as quietly as possible... i try not to live with regret but instead learn.. what what lesson was there to learn here?
after nights of sleeplessness my mind starts to wander in the day... running watter can send me into a panic attack when i think of the look on his face when he washed his hands.. like water was the best feeling in the world after not showering for days... when i cook. i think i could have tried harder to come up with things he could,would eat.. and worse.. i secretly wonder pretending to be so strong led me to this...
all of these thoughts keep me from the good memories... and i start to avoid him all together.. i don't want to talk about him or hear about him.. because i know what is hiding in the shadows of my brain...
these are the demons that i live with.. and i don't know how to get rid of them... except to release them.. here.. or maybe to talk about it...but how is that going to happen when i work to avoid it all?
it's a cycle... and one that has to be broken for my own sanity...
No comments:
Post a Comment