Under lock and key

I had another nightmare last night. That isn't something as unusual as I would like. I think my nightmares are the hardest part of what I'm going through. I lay in bed at night, exhausted but too afraid to fall asleep. I don't know much about what happens in our brains when we sleep but somewhere along the way the part of my mind that reassured me when I woke that it was only a dream has vanished. When I awake, I'm never certain that the pictures and images from my dreams aren't really part of my reality. The light from my window hits me, my eyes flutter open and I lay there paralyzed. I spend my mornings crying over the friends I have never met who lost their lives in the flurry of my unconsciousness. I have mourned the death of a child I loved with my entire body that has never been born. The line between imagination and reality has dissolved, I can no longer trust my own mind. I have been certain of conversations I have had, memories I visit often and found later that they never existed in reality. I have spoken fondly to a friend of a day we spent together in a park only to be humiliated when I am corrected, and learn that it never happened. It confuses me. I'm not sure which of my memories I have actually experienced with others and which ones were created in my dreams, branded into my mind and sold to me as truth.
Since I have exited the world of employment my days blur together. I try to fill them with chores and hobbies. All within the safety of the walls in my home. Until I learn to face the two worlds I live in here, the conscious and unconscious, I cannot face the reality of the even larger and more uncertain world outside me. Once I lived a life where the idea of spending a week without leaving the boundaries of my home sounded like my personal hell. Now anything that extends beyond them is a threat. My comfort zone is everything to me. I made a career out of being social with others, serving and entertaining them and feeling excitement listening to the stories of the places the have been and the experiences they have had, sharing my own stories of triumph and pain. Now every stranger is a threat. I don't trust them, I have lost faith in the general goodness of humanity. I have been a victim a the hands strangers more often than anyone should at my age. I have been raped, sexually assaulted, mugged at gunpoint. I can no longer move through life carefree and open minded. call me a cynic but the world hasn't given me a reason to feel otherwise. The risk of pain that comes from being open is too great. Home is where the heart is and I'm keeping my heart and body locked away safely in my home.