Fireworks

Outside there fireworks go off, it is now the 4th hour of this going on and with the anxiety about going to bed increasing its getting too much. My body starts to feel uncomfortable, my stomach does flip flops as I think about the thing that's sitting on my bedside table, the light of my phone screen is getting brighter even as I turn it down to the lowest setting. Just as I think the fireworks are stopping for the night. Bang bang bang. More fireworks.

My hands clamp over my ears and I close my eyes curling my body into a tight ball with all my muscles tensed.

This is what I was trying to avoid. My already fast breathing gets faster and I start to feel light headed. I try to go to a place where I feel safe and happy inside my head but as each firework goes off I get distracted and I end up back in the real world where everything is too overwhelming. My rocking gets more and more violent as I get more upset finding it harder to calm myself down. I struggle to resist the urge to hit my head so I squeeze my hands against my ears tighter.

As I start to exhaust myself as it gets later into the night I calm down enough to fall into a restless sleep dreaming of meltdowns and confrontations about the thing that still sitting on my bedside table.