Nightmare ramblings....

I am a person that deeply believes that everything happens for a reason.  There are many times in my life where that simple phrase has gotten me through.  Days like this though, that phrase is so hard to accept.  Looking from the outside no person could fathom some of what I've been through.  Although I have accepted what has happened in my past, it still haunts me.  Nights like last night filled with nightmares of horror, pain, suffering, troubles.  I don't share my darkest fears and thoughts with most as I just don't want to bother them with it.  We all have our own problems, fears, past hurts.  When I have a night filled with nightmares like I did last night I awake in the morning only to have my mind racing with the thoughts of all that has hurt me in my life.  Somehow in these moments I am taken back to the time when I was hurt, I can feel the sorrow, the darkness, the pain, the fear.  The only difference between now and then, is that I do not cry.  I do not shed tears about these things like I used to, I am in a way numb to that pain even though it feels as real as the moment it happened.  Nightmares like these are the ones you wake up and remember, nightmares like these are the ones that make me wake up again and again throughout the night.  I wake up, think about what just happened, take a moment to realize that I am safe, and drift back off to sleep only to have the darkness creep back in.  Nightmares that do not portray the actual events as they happened, almost, but in a way only magnifying what happened.  Rape, death, betrayal, abuse.... these are what my nightmares consist of.  It is a dark place that for whatever reason my mind can not let go of just quite yet.  I tell myself daily that I am okay with the things that happened to me, I speak freely of some of these pains, but not all.  I wonder many mornings like this when and if these nightmares will ever cease.  If they will ever vanish from my conscience.  I don't think they will.  We all go through our own pain, our own journey in life... we don't have the same pain or the same experiences - no other would truly be able to grasp all that I have been through no matter how much they cared or wanted to, and that is ok.  Days like this are the ones that I feel most compelled to help others - that is what I want to do.  Fixing others problems, or helping others, it is one of the few things in this life that gives me complete and utter satisfaction.  There used to be a time when I thought nobody could understand me, understand my pain.  I grew to realize that although others have not been 'exactly' what I have been through, that someone out there has shared similar grief.  Remembering a time when my entire world was dark, when not even the tiniest ray of light shown through, feeling as if it were me and only me against the world....... I want to help people in 'that' moment and let them know there is hope.  It's not easy.  Depending on the experience, the person, it may take a week to sort through the pain, a month, the most painful thing that I went through took me two years to come to terms with.  Just know that there is hope in feeling 'normal' again... there is hope in finding joy and enjoying life - that we must take every single experience in our life, no matter how horrible... get through that experience and find that after, after we have gotten through it - we become stronger for it.  Through all I have experienced there is still some of me left that is naive and trusting, loving - all the pains in the world could not take away who I am as a person.  I feel at this point in my life I am able to love, show love, give love more than I ever have because I know how lucky I am to be here, to be healthy, to have the life that I do.  When you feel a pain 'so' deep, so heart wrenching that you just want to die, when you make it through that, every emotion you feel for the rest of your life is intensified beyond explanation - it is a gift really.  If you are in that darkness, the darkness that swirls with no light, no hope, where every breath you take you want to be your last... don't let it be your last.  Keep breathing,  and just make it to tomorrow.  Reading those words, if you are where I was, you may not believe them, and that is ok - just have faith that no matter how bad things get in your life, that someone else has had similiar experiences and gotten through them.  There is love in life, find that, hold on to it... keep going.