Not All Public Breakdowns Are Bad
Her name is Cherry, we've just met, but already she knows me better than you
I have several Substack drafts patiently waiting to be fiddled with until I can’t tell if they’re good or not. Seven drafts, to be exact. They range in topic and lightheartedness, with “Exuberant Fans of Jazz Are the Worst” perhaps the most ambitious (it’s a thank you letter to my ex-boyfriend for teaching me nearly everything I know about music).
For now, they remain as drafts as I try to achieve the not-so-insignificant task of getting my life together.
I think the last time I dropped into your inboxes, I was for some reason very sad that people I didn’t want to live with would no longer be living with me. It all worked out well though, in the end. Perhaps my friends weren’t lying to me after all.
The past month I’ve done nothing but sort through/out my life - moving boxes of my sentimental belongings, ordering more boxes of less sentimental, but necessary things, traipsing up and down SO MANY flights of stairs that my phone told me I’ve reached a new monthly average.
I am moving for the fifth time in 18 months and am exhausted from continuous movement. I’ve not had the time I would have liked to put my thoughts into words for the world (or all 65 of you, for my world extends to you and you alone).
I’ve been trying to piece my life together in the same way I’ve been assembling Ikea furniture: lying on the floor, crying and panic calling my Mum. In doing so, I’ve begun to reckon with the overall health of my emotional wellbeing.
In the course of my reckoning, there have been occasional public outbursts of tears.
One episode occurred in the winebar-spin off of one of my favourite restaurants. The waiter and I had a cute thing going on at the start of the evening as I’d arrived early. Once my friends appeared, they asserted after some back and forth that he seemed rather humourless. I told them off for insulting my new boyfriend. Anyway, he and I were doing a whole thing and I considered asking him out before I left. Any temptation I felt was swiftly kicked in the ballsack once he silently placed a napkin in front of me as I sobbed to my friends.
It’s kind of hard to ask someone out when they’ve just watched you sob over your dinner. “Hope you’re ok”, were his parting words to me. I said thanks and left.
My other recent public cry took place in the cinema, at a screening of Barbie. It happened as the lights were still up and people were taking their seats. My friend held me and I cried in her arms, in full view of the many people behind us.
I’m lucky to have the group of friends I have, but there are some who bring out my mania more than others. Not in a bad way! More in a they’ve seen me at my most erratic and still love me, so it feels safe to let loose around them.
One such person in my life is Ray. He recently came over to help me sort through some bits in the new place. Being the person I am, before I had moved my clothes or stocked my fridge, I insisted we go out to buy as many plants as we could carry.
We went to a shop down the road, which I later learned has a few branches dotted around the city. Ray surprisingly knows lots about plants and all I know is that they like to be spoken to, and I’m bad at keeping them alive.
Whenever I am with Ray, I am somehow at my most unstable and financially irresponsible. It’s a combination he is both highly amused and horrified by. I think if we’re being honest, I play it up a bit when I’m with him, as I know how much he likes to witness me being a tad hysterical.
Around the shop, I picked up plants that grabbed my eye and he would ask “Are you sure?” in a pointed tone, which I hissed away. He was right to ask as I had accidentally bought a rare form of Monstera for £90.
Still waiting at the till, having already done a whole saga of mad cackling through a painful conversation with the very sweet and offensively young sales assistant about memberships and savings, I clutched the receipt and turned to the manager and said “I didn’t realise” in panic.
What followed felt like an excerpt from a surreal dream, that you can’t quite do justice when retelling to someone else.
We went through a theatrical process of re-scanning, moving from bag to counter and vice versa, checking tags and labels over and over. I was half laughing half apologising and Ray was just stood with his hands over his mouth in disbelief at my inability to navigate life without causing issues.
The young sales associated was dropping funny one liners like “Do you usually just pick stuff up in shops without checking the price then?”, and the manager, a tall woman with dark hair named Cherry, was the conductor of the whole performance.
It was a rare instance of meeting a stranger and feeling like they instantly understood my sense of humour and by extension, a little bit of who I am. She was funny and beautiful, tall with dark hair and a tangible warmth.
She mocked me for the mess I’d created, as I stood surrounded by plants that no longer fulfilled the criteria of the membership I had just signed up to. At one point she looked at me and said “You’re Iranian aren’t you?”, and I responded “Yes - how did you know?” to which she stated “I can just tell.” This was in itself hilarious to me. I understood what she meant. Iranian women are a bit mad and particular and I can see from the past 10 minutes who you are.
Cherry and I bonded. She told me of the man she’s seeing: Jordanian, quite shallow and selfish (her words!) and she told me not to listen to her advice as her life was a mess. I flurried out the shop, arms interlinked between my many many plants and Ray, with a “So is mine babes!”
Talking to strangers about your mental health is basically the underlying principle of psychotherapy. It doesn’t always have to be painful and difficult, there is often humour to be found if you get lucky enough and find the right stranger.