Lights, Sounds, Colors, Crowds

[Aura]

Aleksandra still had some conflicting emotions as she sat in the back of her parents’ car. They had already left the house, so it wasn’t like they could abruptly change their minds and turn back. It didn’t even seem like something that she should be worried about in the first place, even though she had convinced them that she was totally fine with it. Even so, she still held on to some doubts.

It started when they learned about a festival that was taking place over the weekend. Her parents started talking after reading about it in the newspaper, and they recalled going to a similar event in the city before she was born. There would be music, food, and carnival games in addition to a collection of other miscellaneous things. Aleksandra thought that it sounded like they were trying to do a lot of things at once, but her parents seemed interested, so she didn’t raise any complaints. She actually agreed with them that it sounded like fun.

She didn’t expect them to latch onto the idea, but once they started talking about it, she would have felt guilty for shooting their hopes down. They asked her what she thought about the festival, and they seemed mostly worried about how she would handle it, since they already knew that she wasn’t too great with crowds. She insisted that she would be fine. She wasn’t convinced of that herself, but she managed to get her parents to think that she had.

Now that the day of the festival had come though, she was having serious second thoughts. She wasn’t fond of going to events of any sort, mostly because she hated crowds. But they were already this far, and her parents were in the front seat talking excitedly about it. It had already been decided that this was going to be a fun family outing, so she tried to push her anxiety to the side and put on a happy face for the day ahead.

Once they made it to the festival and got their tickets, Aleksandra realized that she might have made a mistake. The area was swarming with people, and they were talking so much amongst themselves that their words blended into a cacophony of noise. She stood close by her parents as she felt a twinge of regret.

But she had to put that aside. They were there to have fun, so that’s what they were going to do.

They managed to navigate a short path through the crowd to some booths manned by local artists who were selling their wares. Her parents looked at a set of bracelets crafted by a jeweler while she was busy examining a variety of postcard-sized paintings that had been made by the person next to the jeweler. It was fascinating, looking at the way the colors blended and danced together.

“Let’s go, Aleksandra. There’s still a lot more to see.”

Her mother’s call snapped her out of her art-influenced trance, and she broke away from the painter’s booth to follow her parents. There was a little bit of distance between them, but Aleksandra was able to make it up handily thanks to her long strides. The calmness that she had felt from looking at art faded within a minute as she returned to the loud, chatty waves of the crowd.

She tried to keep her focus on her parents and block everything else out in an attempt to manage her anxiety. The way they pointed to things that caught their interest. The way that her mom interlaced her arm with her dad’s when they talked about the last time they went to a festival. The way her dad laughed. It almost worked.

They passed by a stage where a band had just finished setting up their equipment, and neither of the three paid much mind to it. That lack of attention made it more jarring when they began to play, the sound from their instruments amplified by their speakers.

Aleksandra flinched when the music started. It was worse that the constant talking many times over. Now only was it incredibly loud, but she could feel the vibrations from the speakers thanks to her relatively close proximity to them, a constant, deep thumping that resonated through her body. She had never felt this before, and it was strange and uncomfortable.

Her anxiety was creeping up at a rapid pace, and she was desperate to find a way to stem it. Her stims usually came into play here, but she couldn’t rock while she was walking, so that left her to move onto another option. She stuck her hands in her pockets in search of a soft square of fabric or tiny plush that she could feel to give her a sense of comfort. Her fingers frantically twitched around the insides of her pockets before she came to an unfortunate realization.

She forgot to bring any comfort items.

Her breathing was quickening. She was having trouble focusing. In desperation, she closed her eyes and put her head down, trying to block everything out, but the noise was still too disruptive. She opened her eyes again, but what she saw in front of her made things worse.

There was a couple of people in front of her, but they weren’t her parents.

She looked around frantically in search of her parents. Thanks to her height, she could see over the heads of most of the crowd, and managed to find them. However, that still left her with the task of making her way through the crowd to get back to them. So many people, so many loud, energetic people between her and her parents.

She managed to mumble out an occasional “excuse me” as she slipped her way through the crowd, but her main focus was making it to her parents. She was overwhelmed. She was panicking. She needed them.

She was starting to get close, but her progress was interrupted when an old, large man wearing a bright purple and red shirt came through the crowd in the opposite direction and bumped into her. The surprise of the impact left her stunned, but the scowling old man was not as restrained in his comments as he pushed past her.

“Watch where you’re going!”

It was too much. All the sound, all the colors, and all the sensations from the speakers and having to push herself through the crowd. She couldn’t handle it. She wanted it to stop.

Aleksandra closed her eyes, put her hands over her ears, and screamed, which evolved into sobs as her emotions continued to escalate.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw her parents running up to her, buth with expressions of surprise and regret. They led her away from the band and to a small sitting area, where they let her sit down in a folding chair to calm down. Her mother gently held her hands in an attempt to soothe her. It used to work when she was younger.

“Aleksandra, are you okay?”

She didn’t answer. She was sniffing and trying to stem her crying. She wasn’t comfortable, not even this far from the crowd and the sound. Her mother changed the question.

“Do you want to go home?”

Aleksandra had an answer for that. She nodded and choked back her tears enough for her voice to be legible.

“Yeah.”

Zoya turned to her husband. “Come on Petro. We’re going home.” He offered no objections, more worried for Aleksandra than anything else at that moment.

Aleksandra was flanked by her parents as they headed out of the festival. They took an alternate route that went far away from the stage rather than right through it, greatly diminishing its effect on the way back.

Aleksandra’s parents weren’t mad, she knew that. That didn’t keep her from feeling that she ruined their outing, though. They had been so happy and excited just an hour before, and now they were leaving early for her sake. She was worried that she had embarrassed them, and the judging glares that she had seen from some of the other festival-goers after her panic attack did nothing to change that interpretation. She felt humiliated.

Now they were back in the car and on the way home. Part of her wanted to tell them to turn back and try to enjoy the festival, but it was too late for that. And besides, she didn’t trust herself to be able to handle it now.