Are you embarrassed by your friend/loved one/colleague? why be embarrassed? Why worry about what anyone thinks? Ask yourself WHY would you be embarrassed because a person is in a total state of despair & obviously having a really bad time. Are YOU that important? Are you so worried about your image that you can’t possibly be seen with someone in distress? I’m mean really? Get a grip! Get over yourself! This actually could happen to you & never EVER think you are immune to this, you never know what is going to happen in life which might well make you just like it.
I literally do not care who is watching, staring, whispering about why my mum is standing there, crying, shaking in the middle of the town centre. The only thing I care about is calming her down, comforting her & trying to get her back to the car or to a place where she feels safest.
I have been in so many situations like this I have lost count. My mum would feel so utterly overwhelmed & frightened that she would literally freeze. If anyone ever came up to us, a stranger or a person she knew, she would cry, uncontrollably. She would look at them & beg with her eyes, beg for help, reassurance, anything just not to feel the way she did.
This isn’t a dramatised story, it’s all too true I’m afraid, I can’t even explain how bad some days were, how many times we stood in the middle of a superstore, town or cafe & I would be trying to reassure my mum & help her to stop crying, not because I cared what anyone thought but because I so desperately wanted her to stop feeling like it. I have never known anyone in my whole life cry as much as she cried, it was like everything that has happened to her during her life was coming out in tears. Every single little bit of pain, every bad word said to her, every stab of grief she had ever felt was pouring out in streams. She would wake up & cry for hours & hours, then fall asleep through pure exhaustion & then repeat the process all over again. I would be a liar if I told you I didn’t shout at her on a couple of occasions. My stress levels were sky high & I was totally exhausted myself. She wouldn’t or couldn’t talk, I didn’t understand why she was crying & she just couldn’t stop. I feel awful for those occasions when I lost it & raised my voice but I’ve learnt to forgive myself, I’m only human after all.
Of course, now I know the reasons. I know she was/is ill, she was reliving her past, her childhood, her losses. She was crying tears of sadness & frustration that she had held in for years for us kids. My poor mum, she had been through so much pain, tournament & grief, how could I ever be embarrassed by her or her illness? I can’t & I am not.
Mental health (poorly brain) 