Sometimes you can’t push back the night terrors

I have always had night terrors, anxiety attacks, rampant thought patterns, and just gut-ripping sadness or scared. Well, I have had them ever since as a teenager at least, probably partially brought on by all the stuff that happened as a teen, my brain chemistry, or more likely a combination.

So sometimes if I write it down, even if it is a bunch of scattered thoughts on my website, I can make it go away for long enough for me to go to sleep, so you get one of those posts (I think I have other posts like this scattered in here or in my previous journal that I think is still linked here).

The anxiety isn’t something I can just shut down, it can be the realization that my friends, family, and spouse are going to one day just be gone and I may never see them again just winds me up. I realize this is not happening now, and that there is probably plenty of time, but my ADHD and trauma have a hard time letting it go.

To be honest, there are some things I can do to fall asleep fairly painlessly and sometimes get more than 4 hours of sleep (before I used those things over the last year or two I never got more than 3-4 hours of sleep), but last two days my anxiety during the day has been pretty bad and when I am like that, it is hard to do what I need to, in order to fall asleep.

As for my fears, some people might point to an afterlife, and I do fervently hope that is the case, but the religions all point to judgment, fear, and anguish about punishment, and all that to me seems to be actually horrific if you step back and think about it. The only way you can see your loved ones is if you hate others for their beliefs, that you follow teachings and deny who you love all because some old men decide what you are is not allowable. This is in addition to the fact that they all are piled with lies and perverted teachings filled with selfish clergy. I can’t trust anything they say, nor will I let myself engage in those hateful beliefs about others.

Some have mentioned it might work better if I were an atheist and developed the outlook that this is it, and to be honest that freaks me out as much. It makes me angry at how unfair life is to people who never had a chance, how unfair it is that I might never meet people again, and how weirdly fucked up and arbitrary things are, and then that is it, those people just stop existing after having to endure all that pain.

I acknowledge the most likely outcome is this is it, there isn’t anything after we pass on. I do hope there is something else, I am not against the idea of reincarnation (I actually tend to believe it more than not, but not in an official religious way) but also am aware that might just be wish fulfillment.

What I don’t think I will regret is if one of the Abrahamic religions (or all of them) is correct and I get sent to some sort of hell because I refused to worship someone who promotes cruelty and won’t love someone because of their gender identity, who they love or what religion they might follow. I won’t follow something out of fear, and that is probably just the sort of defiance disorder I have.

I refuse to worship something that demands you to worship them in fear or be banished or burned in hell. How is that even a good thing to worship?

I am not even having a religious freakout, mostly just an anxiety for those that have passed, and for those that I love currently. I should expect this, war in Ukraine, Israel, and so many other places in the world. The sound of aviation gunnery practice and nighttime artillery practice just a few miles from my house at this exact moment (from the base I live near) and just the knowledge that while we are doing great fiscally, we are still about 350k in the red, if you don’t have the house paid off, you don’t own the house yet. Mostly I just worry about those I love though.

All this being said, I think I can go back to bed now. So I will go do that, hopefully, fall asleep and I will leave this weird, random, and whiny post here just because I think it is good for me to post this kind of stuff, and I have never been successful at a personal diary, evidently, I am only good at publishing my thoughts to the world.