forget about drugs
couldn't hide. these thoughts find you
and eat you alive.
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thoughts in swarms assault the brain, leave it spent, rent from rest no matter how much it tried to get. what IS rest? the thing you do with eyes closed, or the way you feel when you wake?
i went to bed with those thoughts that don't stop, the kind you CAN only drug away if you can even do that. and i woke to them as well. were they with me all night, or just filling in the cracks of consciousness like some sooty paste?
i got a full night's sleep, 7 hours of deep sleep from which i only woke once for the bathroom, and i feel like i've been up for days. my brain is exhausted and my muscles feel as if they have some memory of it too.
i only recently began medicating my sleep. prior to that, a night like this would have left me with no sleep and i would've blamed feeling exhausted on the lack of sleep. now what do i blame it on?
there is insight about jace in this post. for me at least. insight about how someone can sleep for 12 hours and wake up exhausted, desiring more sleep. insight that goes beyond slow wave sleep, because that's only part of the equation. insight about why medications may not work. how they can make sleep happen but maybe not rest.
medications will never make the thoughts go away. they ALWAYS come back to wage their assault. most brains eventually move on and forget as they accumulate new experiences that are more gentle on the mind. THAT is what makes the thoughts go away, or at least to go away enough to move on.
PTSD sufferers can't move on and forget. and once a person's stress tolerance is worn down to nothing, almost every new experience is potentially toxic, either toxic in its own right, or as a reminder of previous toxicity, or as something that demands hope and threatens disappointment as its reward.
here is what i believe about jace: i believe he suffered traumatic experiences all his life. they may not be experiences that would've traumatized you, but you must accept that HE felt traumatized. i believe he bore that trauma as best he could and continued on, much as i myself do. i believe a lot of shit came down on him at once, including medications he never should have been given, and it broke him. and his already troubled sleep became worse, and his days became worse, and his already troubled sleep became worse, and his days became worse, and his already troubled sleep became worse. . . do you see where i'm going with this?
it's a pebble grown to stone grown to boulder and it's running away down the hill faster and bigger and this hill is big, oh it's a fucking mountain, but it DOES have an end. and none of you are going to like it. the faster and the bigger it gets, the harder it will be to catch it. so far you've all failed miserably.
you can't do it with medication. you can't wish it away. you can't make it stop with tough love. in fact, tough love is when you try to catch it and instead you stumble and give it another good push.
you don't know what to do. you want an easy answer. i'll give it to you. this boy craves your redemption. he needs a support network. and, in my opinion, he needs help trying different non-drug-based therapies until he finds one that works for resolving some of the trauma. many people with PTSD do recover, but you're all going to wait until it's too late, aren't you? keep listening to "experts" instead of doing the research for yourselves, reading about what works and what doesn't.
forget about drugs. they aren't working. he needs to get off of them. at this point, they're just another reason to commit suicide and a weapon to try and do it with.
Labels: asperger's syndrome, autism, beauty, creative writing, desires of suicide, jefferson, kutztown university, respect, shame, Sharon Picus, sleep disordered, terror, truth

