New Doctor, New Meds

New Doctor, New Meds

  So, I've been off of all medicine for about 6 months now, and it's obvious that I need help. Last Tuesday I saw a new sleep doctor - I actually feel comfortable with him. He put me on Imipramine, and we're going slowly.

 By midnight of the first night I took it, I could tell a difference. My naps in the middle of the day are practically cut in half, and I feel a lot more comfortable driving when the sun's out, too. My cataplexy still makes me weak in the morning, but it helps me not collapse, and I was even able to move the table for D&D Friday! It's been lasting longer and longer, so I have hope that next Friday I won't have to swamp my system with too much caffeine in order to get home, and then stay up all night. Asside from sleep attacks, I've also felt like I have something like energy, and more or less alert during the day. Best part of all: The demons (Those damned hallucinations caused by dreaming while I'm still awake) have been leaving me alone. 

As far as side effects - I twitch more, especially when I'm trying to sleep. It's annoying, but I'm starting to get used to it. I also tend to have something of a tremor when the cataplexy would otherwise be knocking me down. My apitite is slightly lestened, but not because of nausea. It feels like I'm just eating healthier - yum yum spinach, ick ick bread products!

Next Tuesday I'm scheduled to increase the dose - here's hoping that this one's sustainable and that it won't stress out my system like the other medicines did!

Demon Identification

Ok, so, I'm a little nervous about sharing this, but since I can remember, my Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic hallucinations (The dreams that I have when I'm waking up or going to sleep, where I still feel awake but my mind decides that it just wants to start dreaming. It's usually accompanied by sleep paralysis.) have always been images of demons, of one type or another. To my knowledge, only one other person that I know has ever seen these demons. I'd love to know if anyone else sees what I will describe presently, or if I'm just weird. 

So, first, the shadow men. I've actually heard people describe these creatures before, and they may have played a part in the Salem witch trials. Even people without narcolepsy or anything else "wrong" with them may see these once in their life while dreaming, so I'm not necessarily concerned about them. They appear as dense places of darkness in the room, leaning over the bed, in the shape of a person. I usually don't sense malice from them, they're just creepy, like peeping toms or something. For me, that's all they do - watch me.

Next, and I've only ever seen one, are the Yetti's. I was on the treadmill in the basement one night, looked up at the sliding glass door, and this white yetti with a blue face was standing at the door like he wanted to be let in. At first I thought it was a person outside, but it wasn't physical like a human, and didn't move like a person would. Freaked out, I stopped exercising and retreated back upstairs, and didn't run the treadmill at night from then on. Like I said, I only saw this once - if anyone has any more information on these, please let me know. Might not even be a "demon," but what do I know about the spiritual realm?

Next are the Imps. There's a Yu-gi-Oh card that has almost an exact picture of these things, but the colors are different. They invariably try to choke me. Every time, either from behind or from some other angle. Not that scary, or hard to bat away - just move into a more lighted area, change the topic of conversation, and you're good. 

Now we're getting into the scarier ones, the ones that really freak me out. There's this sensory image that I get sometimes, with or without the demons. It's a super-imposed image - on one hand you have the purest surface that you can imagine. You know that this surface, if you could touch it, would be the smoothest and softest thing you've ever touched. On the other hand, you have rotting, burnt, decaying, wounded flesh - the most corrupted thing you've ever seen. These images are super-imposed, like a double exposed photo. The demons that I'm about to describe are made of this... double-exposed image. 

These Demons are humanoid,  but may have double or backwards jointed arms and legs. Some have large "smiles," like someone removed the skin from someone's face, and sharp teeth. Some have claws, others don't. There was a time when I was in highschool that a demon dog, made of this stuff, was following me - I actually heard it bark at sunset one day. When in highschool, these demons would bang on the windows and mirrors, trying to get into the room. I finally had enough, at one point, and shut off my emotions (long story, that one, having to do with getting away from my abusive father.) and I couldn't see the demons all through college. However, last October, when I overdosed because my doctor was an ass, these demons came back and infiltrated my house. They've been harassing me ever since, so much so that the week before going on my new medication I woke up from an actually pleasant dream to find one grabbing hold of my ankle. They've never been able to touch me before, and my leg felt weird for the rest of the day after that. (I know it was in my head, but still!)

I'll talk about my defenses against these demons later - for now I'm realizing just how scared I am. For a very long time, I've felt like there was a reason why I see these things with my mind's eye - they're not physical in the least, but the bible talks about angels and demons fighting a war that we can't see. Is it possible that I'm sensitive to that spiritual realm? That there's some element of "reality" to these images? Or is this just the imbalance of chemicals floating around my head, nothing more? I know what my doctor would say, but my psychologist agrees that there may be something more to it. That I might be "sensitive" to this other realm. I know it's not real, it's not physical, but... I just don't have enough data. Let me know what ya'll experience, know, and can discern! Science is about explaining the unexplainable, so... Yeah.

Dream-thought

This sweet torture - I am lost on a cliff of profound understanding, caught between action and inaction, and trapped in a reality that is not my own. My words are my weapon, to strike out at this tenuous dream, to rent it to peices. Do I dare, though, loose the thread of this insurmountable struggle?!

I'd seriously like to hear how you go about dealing with these demons, they sounds terrifying! Also had no idea we can hallucinate whilst awake as well as waking up/going to sleep! How do you deal with them? I haven't hallucinated as shockingly as that but I know with my dreams I know it's a dream and shake it off or try and control it. As for other realms I don't know... That's kinda why I'd like to know how you deal with them.

Mostly, I "guided meditation" pray. I'll write a post about it! Keep your eyes open. ^-^

And as for hallucinating whilst awake, I FEEL awake, but very sleepy. My brain LOVES micro-naps, and I'm thinking that when I'm hallucinating while "awake," I"m actually taking a micro-nap. You know that feeling where you stare off into space and you're on autopilot, or just stop doing whatever it was that you were doing? Or the term "The wheel's turning but the hamster's dead?" That's kind of what a micro-nap is for me. I don't really realize I'm in it until I wake up.

Ultraviolet

Soundtrack: Flyleaf “Fully Alive”, “Perfect”, and “Cassie”

   Colors, muted by the cover of darkness, drifted in front of my mind’s eye. Swirling, they surrounded me. The midnight music swelled and I was swept away.

   Penetrated, perforated, saturated. I became all of these as the music sped the colors, taking me deeper and deeper, touching that place inside that has always terrified.

   Radioactive, I once called myself, because of this place. Even that word, however, suggests light, or an explosion. This place, this feeling, this emotion, it is much more muted than that. It is an undercurrent, at best, a presence built of absence. Noisy silence. Darkest light. The denseness of a black hole, with the knowledge that “hole” is the wrong word. A star that grew too big to let light escape.

   The anger resides here, passing over the event horizon. That emotion, so new, is possibly the only one that can escape, but escape insinuates a being apart. This denseness consists of the anger, of the darkness in my mind and the spaces between my cracked psyche. Every time my life has shattered, this dense darkness has grown. This dense fire, flaming, raging through my heart.

   Where did it come from? Caves. The ultimate darkness of caves; The pressure of the earth above, and the earth below, and the earth all around. It’s formed from the echo of water, more a memory than reality, long lost by the thirsty roots. The strange formations of mineral and magic give it power, dwelling within the places where only the most basic of living forms exist. This dark fire comes from that ultimate purity.

   It whispered through my head during sleepless months, found that hole carved from childish dreams deep inside, naive hopes and trust, and set itself to stay. It is now part of me, the purity, the darkness that has form; That lightless fire – burning cold, comforting pain, unseen light.

   When all was stripped away, when the final fragments of my glass frame were taken and shattered, this denseness remained. This is what I have become, what I always have been behind the mask.

   You can’t break fire, for it has no form. You can’t extinguish it, if it has fuel. You can’t control it, for it is unpredictable. You can use it, but it remains its own master. Try, any of it, and you’ll get burned, unrepentantly.

It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth. You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything. But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures. Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.

David Cain, “Procrastination Is Not Laziness” (via lilywhite-electricblue)