Friday, September 08, 2006

Up All Night

I don't even want to be typing this here. I want to be in bed. Asleep. Preferrably with my sweet husband, but he's working tonight. And I can't sleep.

You see, I heard a cough.

#1 Son has insomnia these days. He says it's been going on for a while. He came out of his room at 10:30 last night complaining of being unable to sleep, and I pointed out that perhaps if he changed from his school uniform into some pajamas and laid down in a reasonably made bed, he might feel differently. He just blinked at me. And twitched.

He does that a lot. Just looks at you, blinking uncomprehendingly. Sometimes it's almost a R.E.M. sort of movement, quick, jerky, back and forth. I think sometimes it's an effect of the redirection therapy he had a couple years back to deal with the trauma of being molested. This is a kid with a lot of repressed issues, I totally know that. I just worry that he doesn't have the coping strategies to deal with the onset of puberty and the realization of what really happened to him that will probably accompany those changes. I worry a lot.

I want to be able to just trust that everything will be OK, but there's no telling, there's just none. I want to bury my head under a pillow and hope it all goes away. I want to call up RAINN and spill my guts: "Help, I'm an adult survivor of multiple sexual assaults, two of them in the same fricking WEEK so my mom thought I was just reacting to the date rape and didn't believe me about my brother, so she didn't tell my dad so he couldn't tell HER he'd caught the little bastard at it before with my sisters and we could have gotten HELP and he could have been STOPPED before he went on to victimize kids in other states and even other countries and maybe I wouldn't have quite so many nightmares now that my stepson has been molested at his own mother's house by a kid who shouldn't even be his stepbrother except that people are so STUPID and now he's having to deal with this stupid stupid STUPID family-solidarity thing where the criminal is accepted and idolized and is his main role model of how to be a teenage boy so now he bashes his head against walls and screams that he doesn't want to be a teenager and he sleeps only 15 feet from my precious little angels and I can't just lock him in his room and I can't stay up forever, I have to sleep sometime and I want to trust him but the only way to really know whether I can is to catch him in the act of violating that trust and my little babies and at that point it will be too late for us all and what if I did catch him and go berserk and rip his throat out or smash his head in or throw him down the stairs, it's not his fault, it's HERS and it's the OTHER one's and oh just please please HELP....." I want to vomit.

2 comments:

Shannon said...

You need to get him medicated for sleep issues. My nephews both have issues when it comes to sleeping. Each take an evening dose, and I don't have to worry. Out for the night, better concentration during the day. Concerta, give it a go.

I did before, and have had the same issues with the chairman. I know the anguish at that monster for invading your home and make you have to think that because of his actions toward #1, then the little boys might not be safe. It's so unfair.It's unfair because he will never think about what you have to think about. He'll never know about your sleepless nights being vigilant in your own home because he hurt your innocent son.

The really sad thing is, nobody was vigilant for your son's attacker, and nobody followed up, nobody protected him from making those mistakes, and now you and your family get to pay the consequences.

Shades of black touch us from all sorts of unfamiliar territory.

Scone said...

Thanks. You guys are totally right. I didn't realize it until now. And Kory, you are righter than you may know. In my family, you don't get to take the pill, just "get over it." What. Ever.