Barely Breathing

I had an absolutely terrifying nightmare last night. I woke up and could barely breathe. It took me a few minutes to come back to reality. It also took me about an hour and a half to fall back asleep. I was terrified to go back to sleep but I knew I had to in order to be able to work today.

It was nighttime. I was in my bed in the bedroom I grew up in, the room in which I was abused for many years. In the room, there were three windows facing the front lawn. My father was outside trying to get inside the house so he could kill me. I watched as my mother went around the house making sure all the doors and windows were locked, but I still felt like he was going to get inside. There was still some way he could get in. I was not safe at all. At one point, he even went up to the three windows in my bedroom to look inside to see if I was in my room. When he did, I was so scared. Petrified. I was curled up in a ball in my bed, trying not to be seen.

What was so scary about the dream was how realistic it was. My home looked the way it did when I grew up. It wasn’t "off" at all. You know how in some dreams, you can tell it’s a dream even while you're dreaming. This nightmare wasn’t like that. 

It was real.

I’ve had nightmares of my father for as long as I can remember. It’s part of having PTSD. A few years ago, I had them so often that I hated sleeping.

I live with PTSD because I have lived a very traumatic life, one in which my life was often threatened by my father. My PTSD affects every part of my life, even sleep.

But I am moving forward. 

When I woke up from my nightmare, I kept telling myself that I was safe, that my father was not going to get me, and that I was far away from him. I also talked to my mother for a little bit last night after I woke up.

Recovering from trauma is difficult, but not impossible.

Defeating the Past

I watched the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World last night. At first, I thought it was just one of those strange and awkward films, but the more I watched it, the more I saw how relevant it is to my life and life in general.

Without giving too much away, Scott Pilgrim wants to date a girl named Ramona Flowers. In order to do so, he has to defeat her seven "evil exes." What stood out to me as I watched the movie was how the past intruded the present. The past haunted both Scott and Ramona. It was something to defeat. Something to overcome. Their past was always "just around the corner," waiting for another fight. You never knew what was to come in the next scene.

In the same way, I am trying to defeat my past. The past haunts me through flashbacks and nightmares. Each and every day I relive traumatic experiences from my past. My past is something to overcome.

I had therapy this morning and to say it was difficult is kind of an understatement. I am exhausted from therapy, especially today. I talk about the extreme abuse, the details that nobody wants to hear, the details that I have held in for so long, the details that invade my mind at various points during the day. It kind of feels like opening Pandora's box. 

But in order to move on from the past, I have to go through it and deal with it. In going through it, we can overcome it in a way that it no longer has the power it does. That's exactly what Scott Pilgrim did. He courageously fought the past and even himself.

At one point in the movie, someone says to Scott "If you want something bad, you have to fight for it." He was referencing Ramona but I believe it applies to anything that we truly want in this life.

What I strive for each day is to feel freedom in Christ. I do not want my past to intrude into my present anymore. I want to be free from my past. And that is what I'm fighting hard for. I'm fighting to get rid of the shame. I'm fighting to get rid of the paranoia. I'm fighting to take back control. That's why I continue to go to therapy and talk through some of the most difficult things one can endure. This life is not easy sometimes, but if we want to move forward, we have to fight through the darkness and chaos.

At another point in the movie, Scott says to Ramona that he doesn't care about her past- that he still loves her even after dealing with her past exes. I believe that's how God looks at us. He doesn't see our pasts. He sees the present and the future. He wipes away every mistake, every regret and helps us to move forward.

This movie helped me to understand what it means to face our past headon. It's scary. It can be difficult. It can take all of our energy and can feel like it takes all of us to defeat it. But we can do it if we set our eyes on God and move through those deep, dark places.