Dreams

I watched 5 hours of a documentary series about the trial of a nazi before bed hoping it would suppress the nature of my own dreams.

It did. The horrors of the holocaust played through my head instead.

I don’t have nightmares unless they contain actual memories. But I slept alone, without my partner to pull tight, so I didn’t want flashbacks.

That isn’t to say others wouldn’t consider the non-flashback dreams nightmares. Just that reality is worse. Just that clips of genocide horrible as it was are 80 years old and no one I know. There is no personal betrayal. There is no waking up and knowing that what happened is real.

But also, a lot of the “worst” happened. I can’t explain to you what being in complete withdrawal from 12 years of psychiatric medication for 5 months does to your body and mind. How I held on enough to fully grasp the horror of it, but not know how to fix it. The complete and utter abandonment and torture at times by my family. I had compartmentalized a lot of abuse and that too unraveled. It was burning pain in my body and terror and tears and 5+ days before i could sleep sometimes and the same went with eating. It was pure, utter, pain, and torture, and so damn lonely. And thank god for my partner and his family. Thank god for them.

I am angry about many things. But for 12 years on antipsychotics I did not dream.

I dream now.

And I dream of a future where 5 year olds can’t be put on risperdal for “behavior” issues at all because it is off the market. But especially not without cps investigating their parents.

That is the future I dream of.

But one thing also – in that documentary – about John Demjanjuk – tried as a Nazi, for war crimes, never convicted, what struck me most was how his family stood behind him the whole way. How they insisted on his innocence. How they drained their savings and fundraised like mad. How much they loved their father. A man accused, and what seems likely of committing, horrible crimes.

And how that sits against my father driving me back to the train station in his classic Rolls Royce, thanksgiving weekend, after I had prepared and delivered dinner to him, which I had carried on the train. I had lost my SSDI case a few months prior. I had tried working and wasn’t able. I was averaging several doctor’s appointments a week, and in pain. He had been helping financially for a few months. And on that train platform he told me he couldn’t anymore. Not that he was reducing it, or would find some other solution, he just didn’t feel like it anymore I suppose. I’m still 35 and SSDI is a damn hard case to win at this age for anything. And I….don’t know what to do. He still has the Rolls though.