Actually it’s kind of strange. I didn’t have a nightmare when I woke up at 3am (almost exactly) on Friday morning. Just nothing (which I love) and then just awake, very awake actually, staring at the ceiling. I should have tried to sleep again. I shouldn’t have just thought about stuff, because what do I think about at 3am in the morning?

Well, all the nights I woke up very early in the morning because I was paranoid about my parents. Except that I’m not now… except that I am… what I’m saying is that the danger was more immediate years past, but not now… I think. Oh damn. I think that lady taking credit for my site might have caused me to trigger myself when I brought up my parents in my blog entry about that… so stupid… but if I stop myself thinking about my parents, won’t that mean that I noticed myself thinking about them? Which then… ARGH DAMN YOU INESCAPABLE CATCH 24 OF PTSD.

It’s just creepy to think of the weekend I spent with friends hiding in another county while my parents rampaged through campus, trying to find and kill me… or the weekend I spent with friends, er, doing much the same thing later on… and the days I lay awake in the special (expensive) dorm room my college set me up in because I had just arrived there in a flurry of emergency dean activity and didn’t know what to do… and the days I lay awake when a friend betrayed my location… twice, actually… and the days I lay awake after my parents discovered which professor I worked for and the office phone number… and the days I lay awake in hotels with nothing and nobody… and the days I lay awake in tiny apartments with no security… and on. And on. And on.

And on.

I didn’t cry. Or feel anything much. It was just there. I don’t even know, particularly, why I felt like thinking about them. It serves no good purpose. I tend to be introspective. It seems to be bad for me; maybe writing this stuff in a blog is even worse, because my brain doesn’t forget. I notice the PTSD started becoming more pervasive when I started writing about it, but the “peaks” are not as dramatic. I don’t know what’s worse: having degraded functionality on an almost constant basis, or being highly functional for long periods but losing it entirely every several months or so, and going more or less catatonic during holidays.

Okay, the latter is probably worse. At least the former means that I will, at some point… get better or something. Learn from the past, rather than completely forgetting every single time.

Anyways, then I tried to go to sleep again.

And had nightmares.

Let me tell you: when the snakes show up (starting off maybe an inch long, then growing…) KILL THEM DEAD ASAP. At least my parents didn’t show up (or did they?). My co-workers did, which was kind of cool. And Google Maps, like a constant overlay on my vision. Dreams, go figure.

And then the rest of Friday was just surreal. I still functioned (more or less, kind of, rather more degraded than of late even) but everything was just… weird.

Okay. And now I’m going to watch more Nostalgia Critic and Linkara. And taking a (single) sleeping pill to try to handle all this, or at least sleep. Sleep deprivation makes everything much, much worse (at least I remember that. I have gone on “memories will eat me, can’t go to sleep” marathons before, and they don’t turn out well).

G’night/morning/whatnot.