RE: https://nileane.fr/@nileane/115737516465386271
This toot reminds me of my childhood. In a bad way. So I'm gonna talk about it for whoever wants to read. It's not gonna be a fun read so feel free to just skip this if you want, whoever you are.
Anyway.
I used to do this a lot as a kid. I kind of think that this is where a lot of my sleep issues come from, I carried the bad habit in my adulthood, as it became a part of my survival instincts.
The entirety of my school life was hell. I'm 28 and still dream about that period of my life every night. I started developing ways of going through life that weren't good. It started before I reached middle school and it kept getting worse and worse.
At night, in my caretaker's house, I would maximize the time I had to have some "me" time. Going to sleep felt like teleporting to the next day, so I stayed awake to push it as far as I could, all the while being in high alert because if the adults caught me, they'd yell at me.
I kept pushing the next day away. I wasn't staying awake to play video games I liked or whatever, that was actually rare, because I couldn't let myself get sucked into anything I liked, as I had to keep my guard up to not get caught by anyone. So I filled my nights with empty, to keep the nightmares away and push the day further.
In the end, it was all a horrible vicious cycle that spiraled out of control extremely fast and made every aspects of my life worse for years to come. I was never rested, always on high alert, never slept well, picked up nasty habits to cope with it all and then some. My grades lowered which made my life at my caretakers's home more hostile, I became even more anti-social which made the bullying even worse, my relationship my teachers suffered and my mental health shattered.
I still push the days away, to keep the nightmares at bay. A part of me is forever stuck as a teenager because survival and coping left no space for her to grow. In so many ways, I still act and think in the exact same ways I used to do when I was there.
These are not good memories. I don't think I have any good memories of that life. But it's nice to open up about it, it did me some good to write this.
#trauma #childhood
