Be Careful With What You Wish For

I'm sitting on a chair watching Buffy sleep and I notice that once again she's becoming agitated only now I really don't know what to do. I don't dare to go near her, not after what happened a couple of hours ago. Ever since I came back I've been struggling to understand what she's been going through, hoping for some kind of insight. I should know by now to be careful with what I wish for.

In a sense it shouldn't have caught me by surprise, maybe the oddest thing is that it didn't happen sooner than it did. I should have been ready for something like that, at least from an intellectual perspective, but I wasn't. I really, really, really wasn't. I'm not sure what triggered it, I know it was an accident and I am aware that I can never tell Buffy about it, but it bothered me deeply. I was holding her while she slept as I have been doing for weeks now and then it happened. I can only assume it was a dream, a nightmare she couldn't quite escape from.

The first indication I had that something was wrong was Buffy's whimpering. I tried to wake her as I had done so many times before but I couldn't, she was trapped and she kept reacting to my touch, unaware of where she was, what she was saying or whom she was with and those reactions finally provided me with what I had been looking for: a clear glimpse of some of what she went through while she was dead. It didn't last more than a couple of minutes and yet it was almost more than I could handle. Eventually I managed to get away from her and the loss of contact finally woke her up. Somehow I managed to hold her until she fell asleep once more. It was hard, but I knew it had to be done if I didn't want her to realize what had just happened, what she had been trying to do just minutes earlier.

It was a painful reminder of how far from normal we still are. There has been a fairly dramatic change in these past few weeks. Moving has definitely helped. She is a lot more relaxed and she can even function on her own to some extent --at least around the house, she still relies on my touch whenever we go out-- and yet I know that the fact that she's getting better is just part of it... the other part has to do with Buffy getting better at pretending that she's getting better.

While there have been some changes, I am also aware that there are other areas we have gotten quite good at tiptoeing around. I know better than to corner her into saying 'no' or making choices, though as long as I'm holding her she is now willing to indicate what she wants beyond the most basic instinctive reactions. Another dramatic improvement has to do with the fact that she is starting to feel comfortable with less explicit forms of touch even outside the safety of our home. At first she kept trying to curl up against me in order to hear my heartbeat, and while that is still her favorite position --and pretty much a prerequisite for her to be able to sleep-- we have now come to a point in which I can just hold her hand or rest my hand on her shoulder and that seems to be enough under normal circumstances. This has enabled us to get out more --if only because those contacts are socially acceptable and unlikely to be frowned upon-- and while we still avoid crowded places, just being out of the house is helping her to rebuild her confidence.

The thing is that while the rational part of my brain knows she's doing better and it also knows that some setbacks are to be expected, what happened tonight caught me totally off guard. I know in a sense it was just a meaningless incident that is unlikely to have any impact at all on Buffy's long term recovery --at least as long as I can keep it from having an impact on my own reactions-- but pretending it didn't happen is going to be difficult. I can't allow myself to be afraid to touch her and I certainly can't allow myself to be afraid of her touch. I know she is still dependent on that contact and I understand that what happened tonight is bound to happen again and again... and the truth is that that thought terrifies me. I can't stand to see her like that.

I wanted to know what she had been through, and while I'm still largely in the dark about that I did get an extremely vivid and disturbing glimpse into it tonight. It was enough to leave me afraid to go near her as I watch her suffer through yet another one of her nightmares and it was also enough to leave me in awe of her. I couldn't handle seeing what she went through for less than five minutes... and yet after living through it she's still hanging in there, still fighting.