From the start of mine and Squee’s relationship, I knew about his PTSD. Of course, this was back in 2004, when PTSD was misdiagnosed and often completely missed by doctors who didn’t have adequate training to identify it. We battled PTSD before it had a name to attach to it, when we categorized it as nightmares and flashbacks and insomnia, when we compartmentalized his reactions to minimize the effects, not realizing we were doing more harm than good in his healing. Often, when the cycle would come around to the darkest parts of PTSD, it felt as though things for us were hopeless, and that clinging to a rock in the middle of a raging river would be a more solid foundation that the one we’d created. That helplessness and hopeless feeling was the worst part, standing by his side as a proud wife and watching every moment as he crumbled, and not being able to help.
The scariest part for me came at night. During the day, he could voice his issues, and give insight when he struggled. But at night, PTSD came for him, and would take him from me while he slept. There, in his dreams, he has no quarter, no rest, no reprieve, just hours upon hours of torment and torture and memories that he can’t escape. Those nightmares, he endured almost silently, and had I not been lying mere inches away from him, I never would have known. Until, that is, he started sleepwalking.
He’d had problems sleepwalking as a child but had outgrown it, for the most part, until PTSD found a way to change that too. The first night it happened, I awoke with a start to him standing at the end of the bed, facing away from me and into our bathroom. There was a light on in there, and it cast just enough of a glow that I could see his face reflected in the mirror, clear enough to see that his eyes were closed. Instinct kicked in, reminding me not to wake him or touch him, even though my hands itched to do just that. I started talking, quietly, and he muttered responses to questions asked by others in voices from his past. Still, I kept talking, and I found the words that reached him, and asked him to please come back to bed, please come back to me. Like a small miracle, he heard me. Without ever opening his eyes, he came back to his side of the bed and stretched out, letting out a huge sigh that came from somewhere deeper than his lungs. And he slept, again, if only for a little while.
Flashbacks are entirely different. Sometimes asleep for them but often awake, it is not merely seeing or hearing such horrific things, but instead a vivid reliving of each and every experience that has compounded and culminated in his PTSD. When he’s awake for a flashback, his open eyes see only the sands of Iraq, not the home we have, the children we share. He sees his superiors, his brothers in arms, and even his enemies, when no one stands in front of him but me. His ears are deaf to the voices of doctors, coworkers, and friends trying to help ground him to the present; he can hardly hear over the sounds of war, gunfire, explosions, shouted orders. But somehow, there is the tiniest part of him that can still hear me when I ask him to please come back. This is pretty effective when he has waking flashbacks, night time ones are trickier.
Asking him to come back while he’s having a flashback when he’s sleeping doesn’t always work, and hardly ever on the first try. Sometimes, I repeat myself until the words run together like a mantra, and I watch in fascination as the tense muscles of his jaw relax and his brow smoothes back, erasing the signs that he had been in torment just moments before. Occasionally, whispering my request a few times produces the same results. But he always, always finds his way through the blackness and back to me.
With the horrors they face during sleep, it’s no wonder that so many who suffer from PTSD also struggle with insomnia. I cannot say that if I had Squee’s memories, that I would fall asleep so easily at night for fear of those dreams. When sleeping is difficult for Squee, it is much the same for me, sleeping in fits and spurts long enough to keep from feeling exhausted, even though I’m still tired. Thankfully, Squee and I have the unique advantage of being able to be insomniacs together, because we have no schedule outside of the one we make for ourselves. (All this will change this fall as Siren enters Kindergarten and we adapt to her school schedule.) As strange as it may sound, Netflix and streaming movies these past few weeks have helped curb some of the worst episodes of insomnia that we’ve suffered in years. But still, there comes a point each night that sleep must be attempted, and we prepare for bed and the possibility of nightmares, never knowing what the night might bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment