WON'T MENTION IT

Since I posted my last blog, Cry, Baby Cry, I’ve had friends and family weeping down the phone or sending messages of concern all anxious about my mental health. ‘Are you OK?’ they’ve asked whilst tilting their head with more than a little of the ‘nutcase doctor’ about them. What I thought was a perfectly reasonable account of how I spent a couple of hours being aware my imminent loss seems to have turned into everyone else’s emotional ‘ground zero’.

It’s taken me somewhat by surprise. I’ve always been one to speak honestly about how I feel and where I’m at. Attending hundreds of 12 step meetings has helped break any taboos about hiding it. It really is no big deal. I find the more I do it, the more blasé I become about telling it like it is. And in those rooms – everyone does it.

Perhaps it was the written version that created the mini furore. Undoubtedly it’s much easier to be descriptive on paper than on the phone. You can better get into the guts of the stuff when you’ve got the time and a keyboard. It might be that the word ‘cry’ was explained a little more like ‘howl’ and in letting my creative streak run free, I have brilliantly described in writing what I normally verbally impart in a low key style.

But now I think back on it, when I passionately divulge deep stuff, I do get a lot of the ‘pull your socks up’ response. And you can tell when it’s coming by others’ uneasy body language. It’s not all my close friends who bristle but certainly the ones who don’t like to talk about their ‘stuff’. The ones who do love to talk about their stuff see my ramblings as mere watchamacallits and simply add their own personal reflection without batting an eyelid.

I’d better watch what I say from now on. In fact, I’ll definitely keep to myself the episode on Saturday when I went to visit my Grandma in hospital and after I had spoon fed her 2 custard tarts and a chocolate éclair that she said ‘If I don’t see you again Bella, I always loved you, even when your mother rejected you.’ When big fat tears rolled down my cheeks I lay my head on her bed and sobbed. She knew I was there and she put her hand on my head. When I looked up several, long minutes later, I noticed that all seven of the other old ladies were staring at me and I felt a complete pillock. Even as I walked out I felt their eyes on my back. I certainly shut the old lady up who had been shouting ‘Help, I’m going to die!’ for a good 20 minutes.

No, I won’t mention that episode to my friends and family.