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For about a year and a half, I suffered severe night-terrors. I should say a year and a half in my adult life, as I had previous experiences with the beast during my childhood and early adolescence as well, a fact I had almost forgotten about until I once again felt that clammy hand on my throat during adulthood.
I would wake every night in a state of absolute panic and confusion for those eighteen-or-so months. More often than not less than an hour after falling asleep. Confusion and panic would tear through me as I sat at the edge of my bed gasping for breath, covered in sweat, cold and clammy even in the midst of summer.
After some time of this, I developed an intense fear of sleep, postponing going to bed as long as I could, knowing that the grip of absolute terror would choke me once more the moment I fell asleep. The sanctuary of sleep was broken, beat down by an inner anxiety, ripped apart by a beast whom I could neither name nor subdue at the time. It goes without saying that this state of affairs contributed to three years I have dubbed «my insomniac adventures».
Insomnia is a fell beast which I have battled since my early teens. I was then, and am still, no stranger to tossing-and-turning. However, I usually managed to fall asleep at long last, and thus get some rest between the battles. The exception being, of course, previous aforementioned battles with night-terrors, so far removed from me at that point that I can`t remember when it happened. I can only assume that it has followed me at semi-regular intervals through my childhood. This time I found no rest between battles. It jolted me bolt upright and wide awake every night, rendering my ability to relax in bed impossible, rendering my bedroom a domain of terror, making sleep unavailable, resulting in countless hours awake in front of the computer, counting the dull hours until morning finally came and my wife got up so I could see some semblance of a day beginning.
I remember these slow hours ticking away with fear and trepidation. That horrible tea-time-of-the-soul every night, breaking me down, leaving me too much room to think, and to suffer the crushing loneliness of panic and dread, slowly wasting away into nothing but a trembling ball of flesh and bone, so exhausted by panic and lack of sleep that life became not life, but mere existence, a grey and dull haze through which I could barely see, let alone function.
There was so much time spent in this state of exhaustion and permanent panic that I still feel the effects and consequences, now settled in my bones, tendons and muscles. My body is reduced to an aching lump of clay, a veteran returning from war to find his home devastated by the very forces he fought, despite me having seven hours of sleep every night for about seven months now.
Of course, this state of affairs is brought on by more than just the night-terrors. Night-terror played it`s part, that`s for damn sure. But other factors contributed, which will be examined at some later time.
Healing from this terror came slowly. Gradually. I had to teach myself how to sleep again. How to not fear sleep in order to sleep. The anxiety I felt prior to falling asleep had to be quelled gradually, through the passing of time and me sorting through a fair few issues I had let fall deep beneath the waves of my subconscious, grinding and grinding on these issues as they ground on me, until both the issues and myself were ground down to mere pebbles, with the end result of me being but a shadow of the man I was. Then the slow upwards climb began, gradually rebuilding myself, pebble by pebble, through the tiny area of calm I discovered within myself during this process, until I saw something resembling the man I once was, now refined, better, stronger even than I was before, due to facing the fell beast and emerging victorious, despite it all.
- Kim Solvang Andersen, Sandnes, 2018
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