Living with REM Behavior Disorder

I’m scared to sleep. i’m 17 and have been hurting myself the last 5 almost 6 years as i sleep. i see the same dream of being trapped in a box, well a room really and there’s nothing inside at first. the walls are blank and there’s nothing in the room except a single door and two windows on either side of the room. During the day the room is harmless and i can come and go as i please… the trouble begins as night falls. The room begins to close in around me and the door and windows are locked… i can’t get out. then a voice i have never heard begins telling my story.

i was abused as a kid, but i saw more than was done to me. when i was only 7 i would hear my mother screaming and things being thrown in the parent’s room. a projection on the walls would show me what happened behind the walls, would show my father hitting mom, raping her, throwing her across the room, i would see the looks of anguish and hopelessness on her face… a silent plea to me begging for help. the voice would change and i would see myself still young wandering the streets alone… or so i thought with my 4 year old brother following me in the dead of night with no concern for himself. the fear in his eyes as i car crosses my path of nearly hits him wrenches my heart… it changes again and my father is screaming obsinities and standing over my little sister, spitting in her face and treating her like dirt, the poor kid cowering in fear as a man like a monster towers over her in the corner. her eyes find me and like my mother plea for help… help i cannot… wasn’t able to give. i feel helpless and sick as the images of my family’s abuse and my own at the hands of my father flashes on the walls…. all of them calling out in pleas, begging for help, to me as if i am the only one that can do anything to stop the pain. i can do nothing. i tear at the door and smashing the windows endlessly… begging to be set free… yet the more i ruin the things traping me, the faster they repair wiht a freezing water that burns me. i am trapped and there’s no way out.

as i sleep and see this dream, my body flails. i hit the wall near my bed with a deserate force that shakes the whole room, my wrists and arms, as well as my feet and legs are lined with bruises that for the longest time i didn’t know where they came from. Sometimes i had cuts, sometimes scrapes and scratches. it didn’t matter, i was scared and since then i have feared sleep. i have always had sleep issues and now i refuse to swleep… i guess i have become insomniphobic. i would scream out in the night and my sisters i share a room with would think me possessed. no matter what i do i can’t stop the thrashing and i have horrid headaches and sight problems from continual blows to the head. what can i do? i have struck out to one of my sisters, hitting her jaw when she tried to wake me and have stuck a fear in anyone in my house that tries to wak me. i’m only a kid and i’m scared of passing this pain and torment to the one i spend my life with. i’m 17 and this has happened since i was 12.