Above is a nice daily thought. It was sent to me by a friend in Jamaica. I don’t know what book it’s from.

Since my (now ex) wife left, I wake up exhausted every morning. In sleep, I cannot control my thoughts and it is torturous. This morning I woke up by sitting bolt upright, gasping for breath. I don’t remember what was going through my head that woke me up. Apparently I couldn’t breathe.

In the daytime, when I catch my “negative chatter”, I can stop it. The hard part is being aware of it.

Every night, I go to bed, 9:30 or 10, and pass out immediately. Then I wake up at midnight or one and after that it seems I have nightmares all night and am aware but somehow asleep. I spend the night wrestling to regain control of my mind. Among other things, I say terrible things about myself, the part of me knowing it’s not true struggling but unable to speak up in my defense. I also remember dreaming in screams, no words, no video, no humanness, nothing that is me, just “aaaaaahhhhhhh!” Screaming like an animal in my head, over and over.

this is sleeping in general, not just last night.

After a long night, my alarm goes off at 5 till 5, but I’m usually awake already, totally exhausted. Then I find myself in this beautiful tropical paradise and tell myself “the bad things are only in your head”. And it’s true. Then I spend the day trying to recover from sleeping by reading things like the page in the image above. And being my own cheerleader, the sane me telling the insane me “it’s gonna be alright”.

By the time I get feeling ok, it’s time for bed again…

Yes, I’m in counseling and yes, I’m doing everything I can think of to do. Someone told me it takes one month to recover for every year we were together. In that case, it’s going to be a long 15 months.

I’m going diving today. Have a good day. And night!