The Brain That Never Sleeps

One day, I always used to say. One day I will get away from her and live in peace. I’ll make something of myself and she will see, she was wrong to treat me like that. Why would anyone want to treat someone so badly, make them feel like everything was their fault? I guess that is something that only the man on the moon can answer. 

My nights are restless with things that don’t even make any sense, my life is better than it was, so why can’t I sleep? The worries that I think no longer bother me, keep me awake, something someone said, a mention of a mother that never was and the siblings that never stood up. A life of constant and irreversible pain hunts my sleep, and my sleep if any is restless and black. The constant muscular twitching, the constant tingling in my arms and hands, the senseless legs that walk me around, every step more painful than the last. Bulges within the striations of my skeletal muscles, bulges that hurt more to push back in than when they were causing constant pain, but the relief is incomparable. 

Fibromyalgia is known as a hidden illness because at first glance you wouldn’t think that there’s anything physically wrong with me, but under my skin, the nerve endings never stop firing. The nervous system never actually stops firing though, however, in patients like myself, our nervous system is in a constant state of over-awareness. 

As a child, all a child wants is love and affection from their parents, not traumas and despair. Some kids have fun and beautiful memories of trips and activities with their parents. Things that connect them to them, things that make them feel secure and safe. While others, like myself, have memories of everything they were made to feel. Or in this case, memories of things they never amount to. The despair they were forced to live in, and the traumas they were made to survive. 

I guess come to think of it, the saying is true “Words do hurt more than physical pain”. Physical pain you can heal, your muscular and vascular system will do its best to heal itself. There may be bruising or physical wounds, but the physical wounds close, leaving only a sliver of evidence or sometimes no evidence at all. But the mind. The mind is another thing, the mind never really heals. We hold on to things that were said to us when we were five and make them part of ourselves, we hold on to it, embody it, and then become it. 

I always hoped to get away from all of the traumas inflicted on me and allow myself to heal and be a better person. But how can you do that when your brain never healed? 

Neurons literally make us move, they make us be able to move our fingers, to move our legs, to type up stories. But then as you move and you walk and talk and you do everything you need and want physically, the brain is always in a constant state of over-awareness. Waiting, cautious, expecting something bad to happen, your muscles are constantly tensed up, waiting for that hit that will not come, waiting for the news that never came, waiting for the relief that missed a turn. Second guessing everything, every choice, every action, every word, every affection. All because, I don’t know, honestly. Why would someone cause so much pain to someone they were supposed to love? 

Inflict so much… causing literal disorders.

Psychotic. That is how it feels, Psychotic. The amount of daily pain, mental, physical, and emotional. It disables you, and not because you let it, but because your nervous system is so on edge about every little thing that your life has now become a wave of constant, irritable, and irreversible pain. A wave that swallows you whole. A wave that doesn’t let you breathe. A wave that some days drowns you.

 But no one believes you, every professional you see thinks you’re making things up for attention and all you need are anti-psychotics, and send you on your mary way. They do tests to recreate a stress scenario, giving you Buspirone to recreate it, and as expected your brain panics. An overwhelming amount of pain is sent from the synapses in your brain, down to the axons on your spine, making its way through the axons into the dendrites and out both your legs and arms, and your vision starts to blur. Your axons are on fire, you want to run but you can’t move. The pain becomes so unbearable that the only thing your brain can do is protect itself and the blur becomes darker and darker until you’re trapped. 

You’re trapped in your body, your nervous system is holding you hostage, you are fully aware of what’s happening, your brain is awake, but you can’t speak, you can’t move, you can’t…scream. Help! 

Doctors still don’t believe you though. They say that you had a panic attack and send you home with mood stabilizers. The pain is still there though, and because of the test, the pain is greater than before. But you’re just making things up, so it can’t possibly be that bad. 

Fibromyalgia, a neuromuscular illness, caused by constant psychological distress. Distress. A hard fact to swallow. Distress. The thing that is causing so much pain is being in a constant state of psychological distress. How ridiculous is it that, my body is in a constant state of distress that I literally can’t function? My mind overthinks, it plays games with me, and it makes my axons think that they must always stay in a constant state of awareness, waiting for something that may never come.  Sending non-stop electrical signals all over my body, to make sure that we don’t miss what’s coming. At all hours of the day. My arms move on their own, the muscle fibers constantly contracting, causing a visible twitch, they pulse and wave under my skin. MY SKIN. 

It’s supposed to be my skin right, MY SKIN. Not anyone else’s, but it’s not. My body is not my own. It belongs to the traumas that haunt my sleep, it belongs to the constant state of discomfort my skin feels. The skin I am trapped in pulses, it vibrates, it twitches, and nothing I do to alleviate the pain makes it go away. 

They tell me that my body needs Vitamin D but before this summer no one said I needed Calcium to make that vital Vitamin D absorb into my body. You would think that that would be known, but before this, I have been taking supplements that have not even been absorbed by my body at all. 

One day, I always said. One day I will be “normal”. One day I will be able to show my feelings to my partner and show him that my lack of emotions doesn’t mean I don’t have any. One day, I will be able to allow my kids to hug me and touch me without telling me their intentions first so that I can mentally prepare myself for the overstimulation of someone else’s touch. Maybe one day they will be able to play a trick on me and scare me without the worry that the constant over-awareness of my brain will be too much on my body and cause me to black out from the overstimulation.

One day I will be able to do basic housework without overstimulating my body causing my muscles to fatigue. And maybe one day I will be able to live without that constant state of distress imposed on my body. 

Distress. Distress keeps my brain awake, aware, cautious… afraid. 

Afraid that there’s nothing more to look forward to, afraid that this constant electrical firing will take my ability, my ability to just be. Excist, thrive, conquer…heal. 

Psychologic distress keeps my brain awake.