Today is April first, the first day of sexual assault awareness month. There’s no better way to start this month of awareness than to have night terrors and sleep paralysis the night before, right? Well thanks to my PTSD, that’s exactly how it started for me.

Before the assault, I had never had a night terror or been in sleep paralysis before. I even hardly ever had nightmares. But since the night of October 7th, 2018, I have nightmares around 2-4 times a week. Now these nightmares aren’t always about the assault and they do not always lead to sleep paralysis, but they always wake me up in a panic drenched in sweat from head to toe. I have started to find a pattern in the nights that I do experience the night terrors. It usually follows a day worth of stress and anxiety. Yesterday I spent the majority of my day constantly thinking about my upcoming exam and how badly I need to study. Then that lead me to thinking about failing again. Then that lead me to think about not becoming a nurse. And down the rabbit hole I went.

The strangest part of having a night terror is the aura or sensations I get before I go to bed that indicate that I am in fact going to have a night terror that night. I will literally tell my parents “I am going to have a night terror tonight”. It’s almost like the aura someone would get before a seizure or a migraine. It begins as a very minimal pain in my head. Then as it continues, I will start to feel very lightheaded or dizzy while lying down. Whether I am fully awake and laying down or I am drifting off to sleep, I start to get a buzzing sensation that starts at the top of my head and works it’s way down my face, and if it is very severe, it will work it’s way down my whole body. You know the snowy channel on TV and the sensation you get when your foot has fallen asleep? That is the exact feeling I get in my head, rather it is more like a pulsing feeling that makes my eyes shoot open and my body slightly convulse. I will change my positioning to try and make it stop, but it continues to occur about every 30 seconds.

I tried everything I could to prevent myself from having this night terror. I tried to change up my routine before going to bed just to trick my mind into keeping this impending terror away. I opened my window to have a cool breeze falling in on me, I braided my hair thinking that a different feeling than normal might work, I wore clothes to bed that I don’t normally wear, I laid on the opposite side that I normally do, and I kept my door open. Regardless of all of the changes, it happened.

This particular episode was slightly different than the others. As I fell asleep, my body did its normal convulsing and buzzing that it does, but when my eyes opened, I saw the figure of a man in my room right in front of me. I told myself it wasn’t real because I couldn’t move as the paralysis had set in. My eyes closed once again and yet another 30 seconds later, I was awoken by that dreaded buzz in my head and shock wave down my body to see the same figure standing above me. At this point I am yelling out for my sister (or so I thought) to come help me. I tend to dream that I am yelling for someone to help me as I simultaneously seeing this dark figure and feeling it pull me off my bed. Once again my eyes open and nothing is there and when I try to speak or move, I am stuck. It is a vicious cycle that continues for what feels like hours, but actually only happens over the course of about 30 minutes. Once I finally break out of it and am able to sit up and wake myself up, I feel an intense amount of emotion. I sob uncontrollably and scream for help while my body shakes and I gasp for air. Scary, right?

Tonight’s episode was different. Instead of crying like normal, I felt empty. I felt like an empty shell of myself. Sort of like I was watching myself from an outsiders perspective. I hardly remember walking to my sisters room and climbing into bed with her. While in bed with her, any slight movement I felt awoke me in a panic. Every time Harper moved, I jumped. Following all of this, this morning I felt drained. I am frustrated that I have to go through this. I am frustrated that this is my reality. Even when my mind is shut off and I should be sleeping and dreaming, I still experience such an effect of the assault.

I don’t know if this will ever go away. I feel like it is going to be a lifelong occurrence for me. It’s almost like I spend so much time shutting out and disassociating from the reality of the assault I endured, that my mind is attacking me at my most vulnerable. Most days I don’t think about him and what he did to me. I feel like I have moved past it, but then my dreams remind me that I am no where near past it. Will I ever fully recover from the emotional trauma I endured? Will I ever feel fully rested again?