Hating sleep

Note: sexual abuse content below

I hate going to sleep.

I thought being in the hotel room would improve things but it doesn’t. I lie awake so anxious that I won’t get to sleep. I just want to be asleep as fast as possible.

It’s not like insomnia – which I have had before. With insomnia you’re not afraid of not being able to get to sleep, you’re afraid of not getting enough sleep. It doesn’t matter if I go to bed at 9.30pm or 12.30pm, my anxiety is still the same. I can’t stand lying in bed waiting to fall asleep.

I have been leaving the TV on, so I go to sleep listening to the news, but even then I am anxious about how long I will have to lie there going to sleep. The other strange thing is that this anxiety is quite new too – it only started about a month or two ago (when the flashback occurred).

My step-father would come into my room while I was in bed reading or trying to get to sleep, and that is when he raped me. So I understand the psychology behind it. He always did this on a Monday because that was the night my mother was at gym. I was always terrified that he would come in (once I specifically went up to his bedroom to say goodnight so he wouldn’t have a reason to come to my room, and he was lying on the bed naked and asked me to give him a kiss, then told me that he and mum enjoyed sex and that I should too). I was ten at the time. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I know I didn’t like it.

So now, at the age of thirty, I abhor lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I wish I could just click my fingers and be out like a light. Even with the sleeping tablets I take, it takes ten to fifteen minutes for me to fall asleep and they are the worst ten to fifteen minutes of my day (except when the PTSD has been triggered – then my whole day is really bad).

I don’t know what else to do. I sleep with both my cat and dog, who would wake me up if anything happened. But I’m not afraid of being asleep. I’m afraid of getting to sleep.

Of course I have no problems with sleeping during the daytime. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat in the most crowded place you could think of (I’ve fallen asleep at a rave). I fall asleep in cafes, bars, clubs, movie theatres, lectures, training sessions, meetings, telephone calls, you name it.

I have no problem with the daytime nap, and for awhile there I was sleeping from 5- 8pm every day. No problem with getting to sleep.

But I can’t (and don’t want to) live my life at night. I used to be a night owl, but I don’t really like night any more.