Starting the 5th of December, this is how my days have run:

7:00am
Wake up from dreams wherein I still live with my parents, and I never had my current life away from them. As you may imagine, these are not good dreams.

7:00am — 8:00am
Try to get another hour of sleep due to exhaustion from the night before. Fail or repeat with similar never-escaped dreams.

8:00am
Feel the same dread and anxiety as I did from X years ago, like I never left my parents and their home of hilariously horrible abuse.

8:00am — 9:30am
Attempt to get ready for the day, but not even bento or shower meditation makes the constant background dread/anxiety go away.

9:30am — 9:30pm
Go through my day in much the same way. Dread never leaves but doesn’t get worse unless I run into another holiday reminder, of which for some reason there’s multiple around every corner. Dread never quite graduates to adrenaline-rush stage, just teeters me there for hours.

9:30pm
Dread pushes me over the adrenaline-rush stage, but I am actually too exhausted to do anything about it, and there is also nothing to act against, so what the hell? Good thing I’m at home now, where I can barricade myself in the bedroom and quietly break down.

9:30pm — 10:00pm
Try hard not to break down so that I know I am stronger than what’s trying to happen to me and/or stronger than my parents, depending on how much my subconscious is managing to stay in the present. Get ready for bed.

10:00pm — 2:30am
Either I have insomnia or nightmares from which I wake up constantly, still having never escaped my parents.

2:30am
Take knockout cocktail of Ambien + Xanax, which is really not a good thing to do, but it lets me have a dreamless sleep (?) for a while.

2:30am — 3:05am
Finally fall asleep.

3:05am — 7:00am
Have dreamless sleep for probably 80% of the time, then have dreams where I never escaped my parents.

7-fucking-o’clock ay em
Repeat. Ad mid-January.

These are not fun days. These are not exciting days. These are the days when you want to take the world in your hands and do SOMETHING, but you end up so exhausted from commute, work, and most of all the PTSD-related dread symptoms, such that you can’t think far enough to, like, follow lists of steps, much less be creative.

Although occasionally, early in the cycle, I have managed to reach escape velocity from this spiral; much of the time I don’t. The weariness just builds up day to day.

And that has been years of my life. Many years with the direct threat actually present, and a few years with the threat chasing me, and a very few years with the threat mostly (but who knows) gone. The bartender pointed out in the most recent session I need to blog about that I’ve really only had a few Christmases without my parents in the background, it happening only once a year, and thank fucking glad for that. So it’s not unexpected or bad/weak/disgusting/worthless of me to still have trouble during this most wonderful time of the year.

Boring fear: it is the fucking worst kind.