On Doctor’s Orders

On doctor’s orders, I am writing again. Okay, it may have been more like a VERY strong suggestion with other options if I didn’t want to write. I didn’t like the other two options, so I’m back to the blog. She said I could journal, but journaling to me is still keeping it all to myself. It’s a written form of my inner voice to myself. It’s seeing myself talk with no voice to it. I need to write something so I can legibly use – find – my voice. So here goes.

Fallen Into My Old Ways

It appears I have fallen into my old and familiar way of living. I am surrounded by people most of the time, but I am very isolated. I go about life moment to moment, day after day. I basically decided that I was done talking about all the issues and the aftermath. However, that has led to too many nightmares to count and my being back to not wanting to go to sleep at night, dreading the nightmares. So, like now, I stay up until past 1:00 am most nights, I have to remake my bed in the middle of the night to go back to sleep because I have made all the sheets come loose from the mattress and I wake up tired regardless of how long I sleep. It’s awful. Where the nightmares are concerned, they are almost as bad as they were during the year following Scott’s death.

Nightmares

The 10 year anniversary of his death was October 6th of this year. I still remember very clearly one of the most horrible dreams I’ve ever had that came to me on the night before the anniversary. Saying it was bad puts it mildly. I understood having that one and a few others surrounding the anniversary, but they haven’t gone away. Unfortunately, I have bad dreams a lot since Scott’s death. I know this because of the aforementioned bed remaking (but that was usually only a morning thing) and when I travel with my family, I scare the crap out of them when I cry out, moan and thrash around. Pretty picture, huh? But as I said before, these have taken a turn back to the intensity and frequency of the first year after his death.

I didn’t understand why it was happening, until I went to my psychiatrist (aka the drug doctor) and told her about it. It appears that since I last saw my counselor on January 22nd of this year that I went back to pushing everything bad down when it rose to the surface. I was so tired of hearing myself talk about it all that I simply stopped doing it for the most part. As I talked to the doctor more, I told her that I just wanted to be healed and move on. I don’t understand why I can’t move on. Then she told me that it takes as long as it takes to heal and then mentioned my having PTSD. Sigh.

Finding What Works

She asked if I wanted to go back to my counselor and I immediately remembered how excited she was when I told her I wasn’t coming back. She may have just been happy that I felt I was in a better place, but because I feel it was her being happy that I left, it really doesn’t feel like an option to go back to her. The doctor then asked if I liked to draw or paint and I told her I like to create things but I wouldn’t say I draw or paint. I doodle but that’s about it. She told me that they now had an Art Therapist in her office and asked if that would be something I would want to do. No, not really. I still would have to start over from the beginning, which I don’t want to do. So she said I should probably start writing and see how I feel after doing it consistently. I agreed because I need to find what works to stop the nightmares and move forward.

So here I am…

~ Joanna Lynn