Crying in Panera Bread

I've been going through a lot, okay?!

I cried today in Panera Bread, where I’d gone to have lunch with my parents, my sister and three of her four children. I was trying to get my point across when my voice started to catch and my throat started to tighten and the tears started to fall down my cheeks and I thought, this is embarrassing but also, childishly, at least this is embarrassing them, too.

Then I announced that I was going back to the car and I put on my coat and strapped my bum bag around my chest – that’s how we’re wearing bum bags now, you know, and no, I will not be calling it a fanny pack, ever – and I left Panera Bread but I couldn’t bring myself to actually walk to the car because that felt like a step too far.

It’s one thing storming out in a huff, but to carry that storming out to its conclusion by actually making it to the threatened destination seemed overly dramatic, even for me.

Plus, there was something about knowing that they would watch me walking to the car that felt incredibly mortifying – the ultimate walk of shame. I couldn’t bear it, the time it would take me to cross the car park, find the car, open the door. And what if I pressed lock instead of unlock on my key fob and struggled to get in?! No, no, no. So cringe.

Instead, I stood with my back to a large pillar – out of sight, which was comforting – and breathed in the cool air and wondered how long I’d have to stay outside before I could go back in and admit that I’d overreacted and say that I still wanted to go to Marshall’s. Five minutes? Ten?

When I did eventually go back inside, my sister reached out a comforting hand. “You’re going through a lot,” she said, gesturing to the seat next to her.

Because I wasn’t quite finished my adolescent breakdown, I pushed her hand away, making my own gesture – to my puffy, swollen eyes, threatening, even now, to let forth a cascade of tears at the slightest bit of sympathy.

She looked slightly alarmed, but kept her hand to herself. She doesn’t like to be hugged in moments of high emotion, either, so most of the time she accepts my rebukes of affection, when they come at moments like this one.

“I told them you’re going through a lot,” she repeated, gesturing, now, to my parents, who were uncharacteristically silent, looking a bit like they’d just witnessed someone falling, dramatically and painfully, on their arse, and weren’t sure whether to laugh or call an ambulance.

Am I going through a lot? I wondered, but didn’t say, because I wanted to give the impression of agreeing with her. It’s easier to say that you’re going through a lot than it is to explain the many emotional machinations that occurred before you start crying, and during said crying, and afterwards, when you’re trying to breathe your way out of the mire.

My sister, for her part, has been incredibly kind and forgiving and compassionate towards me since I had Atlas, who is now almost a year and a half, and whose value as an empathy-earner must, surely, be running out.

I think it is this – the birth of my son, my becoming a mother to a small baby, the sleeplessness, the worry, the non-stopness of it all – that she meant when she said that I’ve been going through a lot.

But I guess she could be referring to the fact that Brandin lost his job in November, and has just this week been offered a new one; the related fact that he’ll be going back to work, full-time, and I’ll be at home, full-time, both working and looking after the baby, a juggling act I’m not looking forward to; the loneliness I’m already dreading, having spent the last three months with someone else at home to hang out with; the loneliness I often feel, here, in America, so far from friends and family and everything that feels like home; the loneliness I’m scared of feeling, now that she was let go from her job and is looking for something new, something that may – probably will, honestly –take her away from here, and me, and us; the tax bill we got yesterday for a year we thought we were on top of but really (really) are not.

She could be talking about the fact that I’ve been feeling really low for a few weeks – probably months now, when I think about it – and have been struggling through this latest wave of my depression while also trying to support my family and complete the final edits of my book and and and and and… Maybe I truly am going through a lot.

She could mean that I’ve started with a new therapist, which is always a tough time; or that I’m having a particularly bad few months in terms of body image; or or or or or… When I write it all down, it does feel like a lot.

It helps to write things down. If I find a way to turn an event, however difficult or traumatic or frustrating, into a piece of writing, it feels as though that was its purpose. It happened for a reason. It happened so that I could write this down, share this moment, explain this event.

This is not, I would suspect, the healthiest attitude to have to traumatic events. (“Oh well, I guess I’ll get a piece of writing out of it, at least!” she said to the funeral director.)

But its function is also this: to tell you that it’s okay to cry in Panera Bread. Or in Halo nightclub, or in Heuston Station or on the Luas or in Starbucks (all place I have cried, FYI).

We’re all going through a lot. The past few years have been a lot. Everything is a lot! (And my “a lot” doesn’t have to be your “a lot”. I know things could be worse. Please, if that’s what you’re thinking, for the love of god, keep it to yourself. And if you’re so concerned about people who have it worse than I do – or than you do, or whatever – donate some money to charity or campaign to end Direct Provision or do something other than directing your whatabouttery at me. I’m not in the mood.)

To be clear: I think I needed a good cry. Today wasn’t it. There were too many people around and I was too embarrassed to truly let loose and I was distracted by wanting to go to Marshall’s. I might have a good cry later. After all, I have a lot going on.