Demons?

[Trigger warning: trauma somatization]

‘ […] 

Don’t you ever tame your demons

But always keep ’em on a leash ‘

{from the song “Arsonist Lullabye” by Hozier}

Lately, my demons have been getting totally unleashed at night. To the point of waking me up in the wee hours every morning, usually around four, and keeping me awake for one or two hours until I then finally, exhausted, fall back asleep and can’t wake up until 8 or 9am. Last night was even worse: I woke up just past 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep until almost 5am and then finally tore myself out of bed this morning past 9 o’clock. 

Are they just demons, anyway, or are they actually a more clear and trustworthy sign of what is going on for me now? 

My asthma symptoms, which were something I had never had until my first COVID-infection in 2020, were triggered again five or six weeks ago, as soon as I moved into this new place. Triggered so badly that I had to get back on both inhalers, including the inhaling steroids, which I hadn’t needed in nearly two full years. There definitely were, and probably still are, legitimate allergens in my new living space and/or on the boxes of my belongings which are still scattered around: dust, maybe even mold, long cat hairs which usually don’t really bother me but that together with the carpet and all the rest might be compounding things. 

Is it really only the allergens, though? 

Or is it also, and maybe even mostly, the feeling of being unwelcome in the shared spaces? Feeling limited, constricted, restrained, confined to my little rooms downstairs? The sensation of walking on eggshells every time I’m upstairs in the shared spaces, not only when my housemate (& owner) is at home but also when she’s out as I feel I shouldn’t leave traces of my having been there, of having used stuff? 

I know it’s not all in my head, not all “just my imagination”: she stated it clearly from the beginning that she would need “visual privacy” in the living-room upstairs and probably would often not be up for conversation when she got home from work on weekdays because of her job forcing her to be social for so many hours, five days a week. I totally get that and had no problem with it. As long as I can get my dinner ready and eat it upstairs, I don’t need to have conversation — I can actually catch up on my own stuff while having dinner. But this “each to their own”, “share the kitchen in silence” thing on weekday evenings has evolved into a dynamics that makes me feel in the way and as if I should get out of the way ASAP any time I’m upstairs in the kitchen — and is making the living-room upstairs feel completely off-limits to me anytime she’s home. She often leaves when I’m pottering around in the kitchen. That’s okay: I respect it and don’t mind it (I really wouldn’t mind it either way). But it’s her comments, her body language: she doesn’t just leave the kitchen; she leaves saying, “I’ll get out of your way now”. Or instances like yesterday, a Saturday, when she had been out several hours for a hike with a friend in the gorgeous weather, and the moment she got home her whole body was screaming for wanting me out of the space upstairs; and then, in fact, she brought up again her need for “visual privacy”, for having “her house to herself”. 

Let me make it clear: I have access to three small rooms downstairs, in a relatively bright basement apartment (with a separate bathroom but no kitchen). One room I’m using as my bedroom (it’s really small); one as my home-office; and the third will be my little “living-room” as soon as I’m able to clear up/out the boxes of belongings from my move and get myself some living-room furniture like an armchair. Until now, though, and especially in the past two weeks while ill & recovering from COVID (& subsequent complications), I have only had my tiny bedroom with my bed to relax in the evenings. Which is probably one of the “practical” reasons why I’m not sleeping that well. When I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back asleep, there’s nowhere I can go to try and coax myself back into slumber — I cannot put into practice one of the main pieces of advice against insomnia, i.e. “get out of your bed and go do something else”. I have nowhere to go. One Friday night, over a month ago, when I had the first big onset of insomnia and asthma symptoms, I went upstairs to the living-room because I felt I would literally suffocate in my bedroom downstairs. When she heard me upstairs, she came out of her bedroom and rather than asking me what might be leading me to lay on the couch instead of my own bed in the middle of the night, she said, “With all the square feet you have downstairs, do you have to be up here now?”. She did get kinder once I explained I was having an unexpected asthma attack and she even helped me with my boxes the next day. But her initial, instinctive reaction remained with me — and still remains with me now. I understand, rationally, that it’s due to her own needs, maybe even to her own traumas or, at least, “quirks”, and that it’s not “personal against me”. But we know that the rational level of understanding is not the only one. Emotionally, psychologically, and even physically, I cannot see it as “just her thing”: at these deeper levels it feels like an attack on me, and a constant attack at this point. 

I am quite aware of my own history of trauma connected and due to living spaces where I felt uncomfortable, even unsafe. I grew up in one such living space. So that trauma is real and deep for me, and then it got compounded with one of my partners with whom I lived for several years back in Europe. Now I’m also more aware of the fact that traumatized bodies are “hypervigilant”, often can never relax back to their “baseline”, and often (hyper)react to situations which are not real threats. Traumatized bodies do so because their brains have been “rewired” so they get (re)triggered even when unnecessary. 

Is that what is going on with me? I am getting (re)triggered without a “real threat”? Is it “just” my old, deep traumas talking and trying to alert me, through asthma attacks, chest tightness, and insomnia, of a threat that isn’t really there? Or is this living space actually hostile and/or unsafe for me?