Snoring?

According to her sister, when sharing a bedroom as children, breathing was not permitted. Breathing loudly while sleeping was apparently justification for having a pillow held over your face to make the breathing stop ( #cruel #lack-of-empathy ) .

As an adult it would appear that little has changed. There were many attempts, but in one very memorable futile attempt to return to sleeping in the same bed, I returned from my dust ridden building-site room with the squeaky single bed to the super-king with the $1000+ mattress downstairs. I was so tired. I just wanted to sleep. Perhaps I was snoring, perhaps I was breathing, I don’t know but what I do know is that I was woken time after time with an aggressive and painful elbow into the back ( #cruel #entitlement #lack-of-empathy ) . After the fifth or sixth time it felt like real torture. I felt rage like I’ve never felt before, if I didn’t hit her that night, I never will. I didn’t. I returned to the building-site upstairs and was never so happy to lie down in my creaky, uncomfortable bed and just sleep ( #fawn-response ) .

And there I remain, still rejoicing each night at the thought of the simple pleasure of just drifting off to sleep peacefully, undisturbed.

When she blamed me for the sleeping apart situation in her latest devaluing episode, the thought of peaceful sleep brings me enough comfort to neutralize this particular thread of the vitriol ( #devaluation #blame-shifting #history-revision #gaslighting ) .