Tonight (or this morning) it sucks to have fibromyalgia.
Now, I don’t know for sure if post traumatic stress or fibromyalgia causes my sleep issues, but I sure have them.
During the day I am zombie like, but at night I am awake. Mostly due to horrible nightmares of someone breaking into my home.
I have a history. Twice in my life (know on wood it will ONLY be twice) I have been at home when someone has broken into my apartment. The break ins occured in two different cities, which was perhaps what made its mark stronger on my pyschi.
The first time was shortly after I moved in with my first boyfriend (later my first husband, but that is another story completely). We lived on a pretty quiet street in a ground floor apartment/house and shared the two bedroom with 1 other roommate.
Our roommate was a very tall black man who worked at night as a security guard, which is important to the story. That night, my boyfriend got up for some water while I was in bed. Shortly after I heard him screaming at the top of his lungs in the kitchen.
I had no idea what to do. The window in our bedroom was really high up and there was this dumpster outside. I thought I might be able to jump as I heard cop cars outside, but wasn’t sure I would make the fall. The other scenario was that I could try to reach and use one of my boyfriends rifles that he kept in the closet. But, I had no idea how to use guns (have always been largely against them) and because I didn’t know what was going on in the living area, I had no idea what scenario I would be landing myself in.
So I just sat up in bed, frozen with fear and anxiety as my boyfriend screamed.
Fortunately, the situation turned out to be non-violent. The person who broke into our kitchen window (which our roommate left open and always felt terrible for) was a young man who lived across the street. He had hit his girlfriend (again) and was running from the cops because of Californias notorious third strike law (it was his third strike).
At first, my boyfriend thought it was our roommate in the kitchen. He was really unnerved and scared when he realized it was not our neighbor getting ready for work, but some random guy in his boxer shorts trying to hide from the cops that were crawling the street.
My boyfriend kept his head after his initial reaction and was able to negotiate the guy out of our back door and then open the door to the cops. The man in question was arrested and charged not just with domestic violence, but also with breaking and entering.
A few years later I found myself living on my own in another state. I had a neighbor move in below me and as I left for school and work we would exchange friendly words. Hi, goodbye, the weather, neighborly chitchat.
On St. Patricks day, I remember getting home exhausted. I had cooked for some friends then driven home and just fell asleep on the couch. At the time, I lived in a historic house that had two units in the main house, and two in the basement. Mine was the biggest at the bottom and then I had two housemates who lived in a loft above.
The door to my apartment was two fold. There was an outer door for everyone to use and an inner door to the two apartments. You needed keys to lock the door in the inner apartment and had to keep the outer door closed to lock.
When I got home, I had the keys in the door to lock it, but I never did, I guess assuming the outer door was locked.
Having fallen asleep in front of the TV on my couch, I woke up to a man standing over me. It turned out to be the neighbor from downstairs. He was obviously drunk, but he had taken my keys, locked my inner door and was holding them in his hand.
My first thought was that I was going to be raped.
But, I kept my cool. I took the keys from him slowly (remember, drunk) opened the door while still chatting with him, pushed him out of the door and quickly locked it.
He banged on my door for over and our and even tried to get into my back door.
Needless to say, I called the police and the landlady.
Although neither experience was violent and both had good endings, I have a dread of being alone in my house. I have a terrible fear that someone will break into my home. Now that I have a husband, a child and pets, my fear has grown. I keep having terrible nightmares that someone is going to break into my house and hurt my child. Not that every parent doesn’t at least have a moment of considering this scenario, but my fears are nightly.
I finally got a dog. Yes, she is small and doesn’t really pose any harm except to bark at an intruder, but she gets up with me everytime I get up, even if it is just to use the bathroom a few steps away from the bed.
She sleeps with me every night and I feel a bit safer.
But, my sleeplessness remains. If the cat knocks something over in the middle of the night, I have my husband check for intruders. If I even hear my son whimper in his sleep, my husband is up to see that he isn’t being kidnapped (and usually up for 1/2 longer getting him back to bed).
Sometimes, I’ll have flashes in my head of break ins during the day. And sometimes it translates to getting startled by the smallest thing, or hearing things or seeing things that turn out to be shadows.
It really sucks!
I can say that my FM symptoms came before these two traumatic events. But there was a time when I could sleep better – and I think these events have definitely defined my FM path currently.
Ay. On to the doctors once again. I need my head examined in more way than one. It is 4:20 a.m. now and I’ve barely slept a wink. I find it easier to rest when my husband and son get up for the day at around 6:30 and I have a good two hours of rest before he goes to work and my mom day begins.
Any advice on Post Traumatic Stress and Fibro? Or any insight into this situation I keep playing over and over again? I am listening.
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