"Even crimefighters need their sleep, Robin."

I didn't sleep for shit last night.

I fell asleep and then had awful dreams.

I usually have very vivid dreams and I normally remember most if not all of it the next day. Sometimes this is cool...sometimes I have really random dreams about ridiculous things that I can call and laugh to my friends about. Sometimes the dreams aren't good, and I wish that I could be like everyone else and wake up without a memory.

Ten years ago one of my Mom's best friends, who I called my Aunt, who WAS my Aunt in all the important ways, was murdered. She was killed brutally and horribly in her home in the middle of the night. I won't get into the details, but obviously it was bad. That same week, four days later my younger brother who was eight years old at the time fell off of his bike while I was watching him (I had just turned 17) and tore his pancreas, severed his liver and collapsed one of his lungs. He was flown in the LifeFlight Helicopter to a nearby childrens hospital for surgery, where he remained in the hospital for a month.

That was the worst week of my life. I was terrified for my brother, and terrified of the world because of what happened to my Aunt. All of the bad things that you see on the news that only happened to other people, happened around me all at the same time and it overwhelmed me on a fundamental level.

Ten years later and I still can't handle being alone in my apartment at night without a light on, and the TV on. I hate going places where there are large amounts of people because my faith in humanity was ruined a long time ago.

My nine year old daughter doesn't have a bicycle at my house because I CAN'T watch her ride it without having a serious anxiety attack. Just the thought of how quickly everything can go badly is more than I can handle sometimes.

These dreams that I have about that week, reliving it over and over again, keep me rooted in that moment. Steeped in that kind of pain, I feel like each time I wake up afterwards, I am right back in that 17 year old mind, terrified and dissapointed in the world.

I don't know how to make the dreams stop. I don't know how to get past that fear, or to forgive the world for having seen its dark side.

B.Wayne