[Soda_Voxel]

When I was a child, I would frequently experience anxiety at night. Sometimes with reasons and genuine (although often irrational fears), but even if I didn't have reason, I'd always experience this horrible anxious feeling in the evening and night. Something about the day ending, everything going quiet, and being seperated from everyone else (even if I was sleeping in bed with my parent(s) I felt this dread when we stopped talking and I was no longer being interacted with) made me so stressed and full of dread. It was particularly prominent when I would visit my dad's house - he lives further away and I only occasionally visited him, typically for a week at a time give or take, and the combination of the less unfamiliar, stressful (not stressful due to anything my father was doing, it was other factors) environment and also this night time anxiety was so horrible. Sometimes I would even be terrified of sleep itself, fearing dying in my sleep. (I had big time thanatophobia when I was young)

My night time anxiety and seperation issues were so bad that I slept in the same bed as my mum until I was about 16, which is extremely embarassing to admit and even think about. After a few months of sleeping on my own, this night time anxiety seemed to dwindle, although my attachment issues still stuck around for a while, being sad I had to say goodnight to my mum and not see her till morning.

But in the past few days, my night time anxiety has returned. There are some genuine fears like before - which are harder to soothe myself over, because they're more rational than my childhood fears, and I can't just crawl into my parents bed and be comforted by them. But there's also this reasonless anxiety feeling, this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's horrible.

I miss when I could just be comforted so easily, by being held by a parent, by hugging a teddy bear. I feel so hopeless, so lonely, so vulnerable, and I just have to lay there and lie to myself that I'm okay.