These are my nightmares.
I have them a few times a week. Sometimes every night.
Sometimes they are just feelings. No dreams. Just waking feelings of fear.
I did not know nightmares were abnormal for adults until I started reading about it. Apparently a very small percentage (under 3%) of adults report more than 2 nightmares per week, or even year. Maybe that’s wrong. It is from wikipedia. But now it makes sense when I have told people about these, how no one seems to share the experience.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Nikki. In her first post with us, she talks about the expectations placed on abuse victims/survivors. Thanks for sharing with us, Nikki!
There was a thing going around Tumblr that I can’t find now because I still don’t totally understand Tumblr, and it was about being a “good abuse victim.” How a “good victim” never gets involved with abusers again. “Good victims” have scars to prove their abuse, they get everything documented, they go right into therapy. They get fixed, they don’t get abused again. “Good victims” publicly call out their abusers… or wait, is it that “good victims” just talk about it with people close to them and work it out themselves and never make a scene? I don’t know, I never did it “right.” I marched around calling myself a Survivor for years which, to me, was like a “better victim,” a stronger one. Cuz when you’re a victim you’re weak and when you’re a survivor you’re strong and you did “good victim” properly and graduated. I said FUCK YOU to victimhood like it was bad. But in retrospect that’s saying there’s a right and wrong way to handle abuse, and that’s bullshit. As a repeat VICTIM of abuse I wanted to look strong even though repeat abuse makes people look weak. But fuck these hierarchies of who handles abuse the best. I am a victim of abuse and I’m surviving.
I decided to track my moods intensely and also experiment on myself quite a bit with certain herbs and diets. I have written a couple of times before how a gluten-free vegan diet, and how reducing my refined sugar intake have drastically aided in helping me stabilize my mood rollercoaster. Another thing that greatly helped me was tracking my moods over time in a journal. I was able to take a few months and track my mania, depression, mixed states of every variety, as well as social, environmental, hormonal, and physical triggers for said mood shifts. I found that many of my mood changes are triggered by certain things (sexual assault triggers, social conflicts, hormonal shifts, dietary changes, etc) and behind those triggers is a larger more independent cycle of ups and downs lasting a couple of months at a time. In tracking the triggered ups and downs existing along the larger up and down shift of my mood over time, I can now identify when a mood state is changing and can identify where I am at.
The other day I was mentioning to a friend that I want to quit drinking coffee. “Don’t quit EVERYTHING,” she said. She does have a point. I have quit smoking, drinking, drugs, eating animals, eating animal products, eating gluten, eating fried foods, eating fast foods, etc. Well, the latter two for the most part. I attempt to consume healthily on top of those restrictions. I don’t gamble or even set foot inside casinos. I don’t do anything that could become an addiction. I even got rid of facebook. And there are many more parts of my moderate stability equation that seem strict to some. It normally seems like I have things under control.
Seven years ago I got tired of living my life the way I was. I couldn’t stop drinking, smoking, eating or doing drugs. I was sick constantly. I was living in harmful situations with toxic people, and each and every day was exactly the same. My only respite was to go out and get loaded again.
Marijuana is a street drug which is produced via the preparation of the Cannabis plant. The primary active ingredient is THC, but contains over 60 other cannabinoids as well. Marijuana is typically smoked or otherwise inhaled, or consumed orally. In the US, it is classified as a Schedule I drug.
