Watching fireworks

I have had mixed reactions to the fire works this year.

The first interesting observation was at my husband's family night where there was a bonfire and then some fireworks. I felt my child part come out at this time which was difficult because obviously if a woman in her late twenties starts talking like a five year old, you would think: 'Crazy!' Normally my child alter only comes out when on my own or alone with my husband as I know we can trust him. I have to struggle to control it when I have my nieces and nephews staying with me for a while. Usually I will alternate between a few alters at this time but occasionally the child part will 'pop out'. I think my nieces and nephews find this more amusing than anything. They probably assume I'm just messing about.

When watching the fireworks it was not so easily explained away and I remember my husband cautioning me that I was talking like a child in front of people. I withdrew from the group then, feeling it better to stand on my own so as not to embarrass myself. I found while the fireworks were going off, I became emotional; scared and excited. Some of the louder ones made me feel I was going to burst into tears. My motherly, caring part came out to help the child part and I could hear her reassuring and comforting Little C. This helped.

I find it fascinating to be aware of these processes happening. In the past I was not aware of these things; just the physical reactions in my body and an awareness of strong emotions. It's only been in recent months that I have started to develop this awareness. It is probably due to the work I have been doing in my clinical psychology therapy to identify my parts and also the projects I have been doing at home.

The first time I ever realised that hearing voices constantly chattering in my head was not normal was a couple of years ago in a session where I had mentioned something about these voices and the psychologist asked me more about it. I had said that everyone has these voices though don't they and he looked at me for a while and then told me that, no, not everybody does. That was a shock. You only get to experience life from your own mind, so if something is with you for as long as you can ever remember, you wouldn't necessarily realise that this isn't the norm.

After I had realised that the voices weren't normal, I started to try to listen to them more. This proved to be an extremely disturbing exercise for me and having written a script of what was being said, I found myself more incapacitated by dissociation than ever in my life before. I was so depressed and unable to function that I had to stop work and could barely get myself dressed in the day.

I didn't do any more work on listening to the voices for a long time. I moved to a new psychologist who spent a long time helping me to gain stability in my life (this is an ongoing process and often needs to be revisited if something happens to destabilise me again) and it has only been in recent months that I began to be able to tolerate thinking about parts much again.

Anyway, the second fireworks observation was watching the local neighbours' fireworks displays from our bedroom window at the weekend. It was all fine until my husband decided to open the window and the piercing shreaks of the rockets sent Little C into a state of anxiety where she started clinging to my husband and saying she didn't like those noises. He promptly closed the window and reassured her.

On Sunday, we again sat in our bedroom and watched the spectatular fireworks display in the city (our house is on a hill and has a good view). It was far enough away that the sound wasn't a problem and the display was wonderful. Little C greatly enjoyed this and I felt all my parts were quite content watching the display at that time. As we were watching my husband reflected on a time we had been at the bus station and the same city fireworks display started and we'd had a great view of it from where we were waiting. I tried to remember this event but I can't. I don't remember that ever happening. I wondered if maybe I wasnt present then and a more separate part had watched it and holds the memory. I wondered if I will soon forget watching the fireworks from our bedroom and I wondered what other nice memories will not be in my head in the future.