Am I Still Ill?

Two outstanding events today (which didn’t include the Mental Health extravaganza I mentioned in my last post).

Reader, I cried.

On the way home from the T-Mobile shop in Crouch End, where I bought my new, and first ever Smartphone, a Nokia Lumia 710 since you ask.

Not because I was horribly disappointed with my purchase. I hadn’t even opened the package yet.

Perhaps I should backtrack a little or you won’t know what I’m on about. You cried Zoe? So what. Yeah but, yeah but…I cried for the first time properly in at least two years dear reader! I thought I’d totally lost the knack. I had a feeling it was the anti-depressants that had dried up my tears, but I stopped them three months ago and STILL I couldn’t seem to squeeze any tears out, no matter how sad I felt.

Funnily enough, it was in the T-Mobile shop that my huge wave of sadness was triggered. I had been feeling sad all day and no amount of distraction and company of other people was shifting it. But also in the queue at the T-Mobile shop, waiting interminably to be served while the shop struggled with its new system was an attractive, slim, blonde young woman I know quite well from church who I knew had recently got married. She was there with her six week old baby girl in a sling.

This reminded me unbearably of the early months when I too had carried a baby (boy) around in a sling in Crouch End (where I lived back then in a room in a shared house). Yes it was my son J.

Unbelievably gutting. All the memories. The hopes and dreams. All the problems. The unfolding history of catastrophe, of breakdowns, of struggling as a single mother, of my son being taken into care, and now, seeing my son at 16 with apparently so little hope or ambition for his future. All unbearably triggered by the sight of this unsuspecting lady with her new babe. Who seems to have everything I didn’t. A baby she actually planned for. A husband to share the load. Reasonably good mental health.

Look at me. Just broken up with a total n’er do well who I should never have got together with in the first place. Son back in care yet again because we his family can do nothing with him. Not even doing any voluntary work. So alone. So terribly alone.

Well with that tsunami of self-pity washing over me is it any wonder that I cried all the way home gentle reader?

Real, fat salty tears coursing down my cheeks. Crying in the street and on the bus, trying not to be noticed (I didn’t want anyone stopping to ask me if I was all right, aargh no!)

Anyway, it did me good, as a good cry often will. At home I charged my new phone and felt duly overwhelmed by all its apps etc. Heard on the radio about a place called Aleppo (I think, I’ve been out of the loop news-wise) where young children and babies were being blown to bits. Thought, you guessed it. It could still be a lot worse.

I’m safe. Warm. Dry. Well-fed. And have just acquired a fantastic new toy which I’m delighted with…yes, I love my new Smartphone already. I can speak text messages into it dear reader! Isn’t that amazing? I’ve decided I made a very good choice. It was only £180 Pay as you Go and has enough on there to while away many hours while on public transport, or waiting in interminable queues, whatever. I couldn’t figure out how to write on this blog though!

And if – perish the thought, I ever land up in a mental institution or crisis house, I will have my own portable home entertainment system.

I’ve decided, by way of offsetting the cost, to stop paying my TV licence and stop watching TV altogether…which I pretty much have in any case. I just can’t be bothered with it. I much prefer the radio…good old Radio 4.

So yet again, a bit of a rollercoaster of a day…but in a good way. I cried, I cried, I cried, yippee!

Zoe xxx