Anxiety

The Nightmares

My mom told me when I was a kid I used to be scared of people. And I believed her. I never liked being in the same room as another human. Didn't make me comfortable. I never understood why. But I grew up knowing that I just didn't like people.

My mom told me that I screamed in my sleep and I didn't know why nor did I remember it. I've always had trouble sleeping in the dark or just the dark in general. There was always a problem. I never knew why though.

I started having my nightmares when I was six or five. My memory tends to get blurry when I try to forget things.

Whenever I watched something traumatizing like the news and someone died or when I learned about the tragic history of America in school I used to be scared of going outside or just scared in general. Through those days I would just try to brush it off and hope not to worry about it anymore. But it all came back to me at night.

I don't know why but the darkness always made it worse. It could be the nicest day outside and I would think about the worst thing that would be happening in the world and be fine. But when it came to the night everything wasn't right.

I used to think that dead people or bad people were in the room with me while I was sleeping and I I used to convince myself that if I move or if I breathed, they would come and hurt me or kill me. Even though it was the most ridiculous thing ever to think that someone dead would be in your room trying to kill you. I convinced myself so much and over thought about it so much that I truly believed it was true.

So all through the night I would let my full body lay under my covers crumbled up in a ball and stay quiet and stay alert and didn't move and try not to breathe for hours of the night. I would sweat through the mattress and sometimes I would cry but I would make sure that it was a small cry so I wouldn't get hurt.

This happened for years. I never got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom because I thought I would literally die. So I used to wet my bed a lot and my mom thought something was wrong with me. It happened to me up to about 9 years old. So I understand why she was so weird about it.

As a kid I never understood it either. Why I couldn't get up in the night and just use the bathroom. Just a few feet away from my room. It wasn't as simple as I thought it would be. As a kid I never knew what anxiety was or what paranoia was. So I thought I was crazy.

I never told anyone for years. And I let them think that I was just the kid that wet the bed till 9 years old. Up until eighth grade I found out some traumatic things that happened in history class. I knew once I walked out that class, that night was going to be bad for me. So I cried. My mom came home and she saw me crying and she asked me why I was crying. And I told her that I found out some traumatic things. I didn't tell her about these nightmares yet.

So that night was one of the worst one that I've ever experienced. And it kept happening for a long time after. Same person came back every time. It happened for months until I finally gave up and I told my mom that I have been having really bad nightmares.

I don't know why I ever called them nightmares to be honest because I never slept. I described them has nightmares because I didn't know what else to call them. I told her that I thought dead people or bad people were going to come and hurt me and that they were in the room when I was sleeping and it scared me.

She told me that we needed to go to church more and that demons were haunting me. In the back of my head I knew she was wrong but the twelve-year-old me didn't know anything better so I went to church. Nothing changed. And that's when I realized that my mom will never even understand it. I was all alone.

That year I got a phone. And I really liked watching YouTube and Netflix. So that's what I did most of the night. And I never had the nightmares again. But that was only because I was distracting myself with technology. I knew what I was doing was wrong. Staying up on school nights and watching shows. But I thought it would be better to stay up like that than stay up scared. Technology also help me use the bathroom at night as well. I used to use the light on the screen to help me. Sometimes I still do to this day.

A few months ago I took a psychology class. And I've learned what anxiety really is and what panic attacks were. And I realized that's what I've been having as a kid. Panic attacks. I never felt so relieved when I found out what it was. And I realized in that moment that I needed to address everything that has happened to me as a kid with my mind. I never realized that I was so different from everybody else until now. I would like to figure out how to deal with it and not just hide behind technology.