A Nighttime Explorer.
Childhood Respite From The Trauma’s Of PTSD.
I’ve always had strange sleeping habits.
At least I do get some good nights sleep occasionally now, I know it’s the single best health benefit money can’t buy.
As a child, through my teens, I always associated the night time world as being a safe place, away from the daily horrors of navigating a very unsafe world of toxic masculinity and crushing insecurity. This came from being a sensitive child, having emotionally absent parents and over emotional bullies with anger management problems and a macho grievance.
A Storm Inside Or Out?
Last night as I settled into bed, I vaguely heard rain(its the beginning of rainy season here in Northern Thailand), spots of calming rain, and then BANG! A deep vibrational crash of thunder came from nowhere, it felt like it was inside the room, inside me in a strange way, though I knew it was outside, pretty close but definitely outside.
The world beyond the physical and psychological walls encroached on the safe and secure world inside and for me there has always been some level of security in my room, at night. I slept pretty well surprisingly, but was awake at 5am (pretty normal for me) it got me thinking.
Knight On Horseback And My Childhood Fears.
As a child, my bedroom door closed with a sigh of relief and then side-table with my black and white portable was pushed up against the door. I couldn’t even consider sleeping until my brothers, my parents the whole street were safely asleep. Safe for them yes, but safe for me too.
My hyper-vigilant knight on his horse, with his protective armour, could not lay down his shield, his lance, close his saucer-wide eyes after the whole day being peeled for danger. He had to keep alert he would peer out through the curtains and watch, until a switch shifted, the dangerous daytime world slipped deeper into blackness as each light was turned off.
My exhausted head could not lay on the pillow until there was nothing to defend myself from, until the world outside was dead - except for the odd owl, a fox and moth banging at the window looking for the light before I switched that off too, leaving the curtains open to let in the moon and stars.
Wow!
I gradually let go of fear, aware now of the midnight rising of my true self along the same transit as the moon.
The Night Sky Teachers Are Ignored In The Daylight
The heavenly bodies fascinated me, I was quietly obsessed with them, not in an astronomical or scientific way, somehow they spoke of creation, movement and other worlds beyond the world I was confined.
They were my teachers in a world void of inspiration.
Even now I don’t know really know why. They somehow spoke to me, made me feel alive and when I felt lost they showed me how to be bold, shine, be true to myself, at least on a sub-concious level.
There is a saying that when the pupil is ready the teacher appears and so I have to assume they were there because I was ready. There is another wise reminder from the night skies that even their beauty is ignored in the daylight.
Dancing With The Stars.
I was so curious about their world, their existence and wished to escape into the night sky after my day spent hiding deep inside, behind walls and to be free, surrounded by all that space. So glorious, silent, bold, alive but with only me in the world to share in their beauty…or maybe one other person, like me somewhere in the world looking up at the stars and moon who I someday hope to meet me up there, or down on terra firma would be good too. I’m still looking.
Only then could I breathe.
The night was adventure time, I felt somehow I could shine behind the closed doors, the closed eyes of the street and the open curtains to another world.
Confined to those four walls I let my true adventurous spirit be free, not defined by the ‘sun days,’ the world of man with his castrating shears to snip away offending curiosity, questions and desires to expand. In the daytime I was dead, hibernating at the farthest corner of myself and as far away from the traumatic world around me as possible.
Nighttime Explorer and Escape From The Trauma’s Of PTSD.
At night I was a kind of moon artist, a scientist night-sky explorer, conducting spontaneous ‘experiments’ with the watchful guidance of the stars and stillness of the vibrant indigo environment. An antidote to the poison surging through my body of cortisol and adrenaline, anxiety and stress of my formative years.
I am beginning to entertain the idea that I suffer from PTSD, though it is something I need to research more. Daily physical, emotional and psychological abuse, nonsensical societal rules (at least from my perspective), expectations of masculinity and sexuality all hacked away at the child - and I still carry him with me today.
Add to that a dominant father, distant and medicated mother, both children of the second world war and (PTSD suffers themselves, like so many of those war generations) but the only time I could allow my ‘me’ out was in the stillness and beauty of night.
Defying The Laws Of Physics.
One regular ‘fun experiment’ was to sleep ‘upside down’ head where feet should go, my feet against the headboard, It does strangely make you feel like you’re sleeping upside down. It was my way of saying fuck you ‘sun world’ here in my world of the moon and stars I can sleep topsy turvy, my way, not your rules, mine, a creative expression, even in that small box room I won’t let you define me.
I can do magic.
While you all sleep through the night, while you all lay with your rules and heads upright I am defying gravity, defying the laws of man, playing with the laws of physics and direction, orientation, a 180-degree shift, a whole new perception of the world.
Swaddling Child and Mother Moon.
Another fun thing to do was to slide the mattress away from the wall creating enough space for a body, my body to squeeze in tightly, the heavy springs and horse hair or whatever filled those things held me, mushed me up against the wall, swaddled in blankets and crushed tightly like I’d never been held before with the gaze of the shiny eyed moon wathcing over me.
I have heard that gentle pressure and pressure blankets can help soothe people on the Autistic Spectrum, which I later discovered myself to be on the high-function end of the spectrum too. Having spent most of my life escaping from the fears of the physical world, of the heightened senses, I found to be swaddled, gently squeezed all around comforted me, anchored me to the world instead of spinning off into the abyss.
Adventures In The Underworld.
Sometimes I would sleep under the bed. Why? I have no idea. Maybe like a tortoise retreating into its safe shell. I like to think it was my curiosity and adventurous nature, feeling safe to explore the whole of my box room world, outside of the confines of the fear, drudgery and normality.
Why do people climb mountains, explore caves, fly to the moon? Because they are there? Human nature is naturally inquisitive, though mostly crushed by education and the system. Our curiosity is matched with a competitive nature, ‘me first’ and challenges are our soul food, and the journey becomes a deep quest for inner knowledge.
Looking back I might think I slipped under the bed to explore the question of who am I if I crawl under? What is this space where no one goes? Where madness lies, where monsters and mouldy cups and dog-eared porn and years old fluff.
It was another magical world to explore the true nature of myself, given the only surroundings I had. If only I would have had the keys to a rocket!
Similar to the way a child would explore a climbing frame hanging, swinging and balancing, exploring boundaries, physical limits and sensations and spacial awareness, I found myself exploring sensitive to the feedback the constant question of ‘who am I?’ in relation to my world.
Sometimes even now I do my yoga practice outside on a gradient, or on the bed just for the sake of it but it its also an extra way to challenge the self with the instability of the hill or pliable mattress. Oh and at the moment I’m experimenting with sleeping diagonally across a queen size bed. It’s fun.
Self-Eroticism.
One last thing I explored alone alone at night was my skin, the boundaries of physical body.
I had abandoned that part of myself many years before, each moment of daily abuse I would retreat a little more. And there was little or no sensation left on my skin, it was safer that way.
I slept naked for the first time at 13 or 14, submerged under the covers with my breath to generate heat and soon I began to feel a whole new me. I had no clue that this was even possible, nighttime was a world of PJ’s and nightdresses and bed socks and mostly being so cold and rigid that the fetal position was the only way to retain any heat. Or so I thought.
A whole new world was born.
A Song Waiting A Lifetime To be Sung.
While you were all dead the world, I was alive. Stretching out like a star, curling up like the moon, turning over and over slowly, riding the sensations, the warm friction, an expanse of sensual terrain and pleasure I’d could never have known. I was redefining my human experience on a deeply sensual level, every nook and cranny.
My skin felt alive tingling, pulsing, shining, gloriously, under the covers an orgasmic journey night after night. A secret I carried with me through the torture of the day, the whole world asleep around me and I wanted to sing - instead my skin shrieked with ecstacy, the fine hair on my body and nerve endings sang, danced and erupted with feeling calling out to life, I am alive, see, I can feel the wonder…
even though my voice was mute…
until now.
The exciting storm is both inside and out, and the child-like play and exploration is definitely a respite (If not healing) from the trauma’s of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - in the past and today.
