The worst moment of the trauma that catalyzed years of undiagnosed PTSD was the exact moment when I realized that there was nothing I could do, nobody was coming to save me, and there was no hope left.

It was the core of all my nightmares. Every time I woke up screaming, it followed the same pattern: someone was there to brutalize me. I was alone besides a faceless crowd. Nothing I did mattered. No options existed. When They caught me, no matter what the storyline was this time, it was so brain-breakingly terrifying that the sheer terror woke me up.

Every dream felt strangely crisp and crystallized. Non-PTSD nightmares still feel like dreams. This? Was like dying in another reality. When I woke up afterwards, for the rest of the day, nothing felt real.

There were micro-patterns in the dreams, and once I pinpointed them, they'd usually disappear and morph into something else. For a while, the attacker always had a knife, machete, or similar weapon.

Even my wife doesn't know the actual content of the nightmares. Hurts too much to talk about.

Apparently I still begged in my sleep when we first moved in together, though. First time I did, she thought it was a poltergeist!

Nope, just an exhausted nerd whose sanity got shoved through a paper shredder.