PruCan - Recover (Nights)

6

Nights became a different routine for us. There had been a time when every night brought with it its own battles and terrors. It had not been uncommon for one of us to wake the other up with nightmares, screaming or crying in the darkness. Time wore on to permit us to offer comfort to one another whenever the night attacked us, but the attacks never seemed to lessen. Until, they did.

The panic that came with turning off the lights to sleep was lessened when you had someone to exchange jokes with until we drifted off. And knowing that if we needed it, the other would comfort us and reassure us that everything was alright helped us sleep easier. And on particularly bad nights that persisted still, we would share the same bed. Strong arms wrapped protectively around you, a quiet voice promising you that everything was okay and it was only a dream – it stopped becoming a dreaded experience to close our eyes, and more the comforting peace that sleep was meant to be.

Most of all, we didn't have to be scared that we would never get better, because we were. Matthew talked and laughed and smiled more, and I learned to wait my turn to speak but even more so, I wanted to wait because I wanted to hear what Matthew – and even other people – had to say. It wasn't that these were automatic cures for depression or narcissism, but they were in the right direction.

Nights had become something new, something better – something almost nice.

Until they weren't, and it felt like we were nearly back to square one.

It was actually a string of bad nights that shattered the peace we had been sharing. Back-to-back, Matthew woke up yelling one night and I woke up bawling another. It took us hours to calm the other down, and I got so bad – sobbing out sentences in German that Matthew couldn't understand – that orderlies were almost called to our room with sedatives. The days that followed these nights were long, exhausting, and stressful, on both of us.

Another night, I just started shouting out how no one appreciated me, and I never got enough of what I was rightfully deserved. When Matthew had tried to help, I had responded that he was just lucky to know someone as great as me, and how dare he question what I was saying. I knew that I was right, and that I was being denied what I was do, and who was Matthew to try to tell me otherwise.

My doctors said it was the biggest setback I had suffered while in their care, after I had been doing so well for so long, and had even tolerated some criticisms and critiques from Matthew, and even a doc or two. It was a complete regression to one of the worst states of narcissism, and for fear of me manipulating or hurting Matthew while I was regressing, I was moved to a separate room for a while and was visited daily by doctors. Psychotherapy sessions went from just a few times a month (which was already higher for me than the average patient that only went once or twice a month) to several times a week after my episode.

I was only separated from Matthew for a couple of weeks, but after over a year living with him, and months of being close friends, it was a long time. And with all the talking that I did with my psychologists, about what happened and why it might have happened, how it made me feel, how I thought it made Matthew feel – I realized that for the first time in my memory, I would need to apologize to someone. And not just a random person, but someone who I had actually come to view as one of my friends, maybe my only friend.

The docs told me that they had been speaking to Matthew too, and while the event had shaken him up, he was alright. I just wanted to get back to him, and to how things were before our bad nights came back.