How I used to be...

It's five o'clock in the morning. And no, it's not that I have risen early this morning, before my alarm, and thus am blogging because I woke up a bit early. I am writing this as I sit here, preparing to go and lie down, in the hope that perhaps I will be able to sleep. And I will, probably, once I take something to insure the sleep. And there will be nightmares, because there are almost always nightmares, filling my head, and my dreams, which is why I don't like to sleep anymore.

So it's five a.m., and I'm not just waking up, I'm still awake. Which happens more and more these days. The turbulent ricocheting thoughts inside of my mind that never give me peace, the way it used to be once before, when I couldn't get calm enough, to make the staccato beats in my head stop.

How I used to be. For a while, it stopped. There was peace inside my head and I slept, and I was calm, and things were okay. They weren't great. I wasn't dancing on clouds, and my life was not filled with sunshine or roses. It wasn't perfect. But I could sleep, and I was doing well enough, that things were...tolerable, at least.

And I miss that, honestly. Because this? This is somewhere approaching intolerable, sometimes. This frustration of intrusion inside of my head, inside of mind, where I cannot make it quiet, and I can't seem to make anything calm for myself. I want it back, the way I was. This internal turmoil that's become "me", I do not like it. I want it to cease, I want *me* back again. The stability and structure that I had, and that I'd adjusted to.

It's difficult to admit how easily I'd fallen into that structure, and taken it for granted. And it's difficult to cope, with the chaos that I can't seem to control. My obsessive compulsive disorder runs rampant, trying to make up for the lack of any kind of order, inside of me. Because there is no order inside of me, I'm trying to compensate by making things around me orderly, and that's failing too. Which only compounds the problem.

And I don't know how to fix any of it. And, before anyone bothers asking, yes I'm already getting help. What I can do, I have done. There's only so much that I can do.

So I attempt, at the urging of someone with credentials to back his suggestions, to distract myself. To chronicle my thoughts with some type of order. To journal what goes on inside my mind. I work through, on a day to day basis a great many things, and I attempt, as best I can, ways to handle all of the chaos inside of my mind. And when that fails, and it fails often, I take the next best out. And I medicate myself to sleep, when I can't get to sleep any other way.

And sometimes I even make it through a stretch of time, without raging nightmares, that make me wake up in a cold sweat, remembering things I would rather forget. Sometimes I can get through a normal sleep cycle, without crying, or simply not even bothering with attempting that sleep cycle at all, and just staying awake.

There are no easy answers, I know this. But I can't be blamed for wishing, as difficult as it is right now, for the simplicity that came from when there was even a vague semblance of happiness. When there was easy sleep, feeling safe and comfortable, and not questioning every single decision and thought process that went through my mind, and then questioning myself again.

To just wake up one morning, and be how I used to be...