Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself

[Ash]

It's been an extremely stressful day. I've self-harmed twice and deep dived some suicide research before remembering why I can't CTB, then went to bed with my book. Then I had a right proper fright and thought you'd all appreciate the joke, especially if you've any experience with hyper-vigilance courtesy of PTSD.

• Ash quietly reading book in bed, hears something bouncing off roof
• Has mini heart attack
• Dog doesn't flinch
• PTSD goes wild but doesn't understand why dog isn't reacting
• Ash pokes dog
• Dog still alive but now awake and very grumpy
• Ash investigates noise outside
• Dog still grumpy but curious, comes to "help"
• No evidence of noise outside but dog now much less grumpy after spotting ball in middle of bedroom floor
• Ash has vague memories of dog sneaking ball onto bed but ignoring it and dog in the hopes that dog would take ball to her own bed
• Turns out that dog did not, and simply abandoned it on the duvet when the prospect of snuggles underneath became too appealing
• Ash was in fact the cause of her own PTSD-induced heart attack by unknowingly kicking ball off the bed whereupon it bounced about on the blanket box before eventually coming to rest in the middle of the floor
• Dog didn't react because she was warm and snuggly under the duvet and not in the mood for a game of fetch

To make matters worse, I nearly rang the bloody police assuming it was bloody kids being bloody kids at the start of bloody half term and bloody Bank bloody Holiday weekend