It can be just a normal day, no particular dramas, but I will have a sudden turn. I might have even been having fun and laughing earlier, but something in me changes. I’ve tried analysing it when it happens, but I don’t think I can really get past the heavy dark feeling. The best I can do when going through emotional lability like this is be quiet so I don’t say something I might regret. 

I do empathise with those around me who are confused by my behaviour

We’ve all been there; someone you care about is being unnaturally quiet and you know something is wrong. Your mind moves at a million miles an hour to try to work it out. And the conclusion that usually sticks is “It’s me, I’ve done something, but what?”

The reality is when I have an emotional lability episode there usually isn’t a guilty party, it’s just me and my unhelpful brain injury. I know it would help to try to tell those around me that. But even when I do it just sounds like a cover up, like when someone says “I’m fine.”

Emotional lability can include responses such as laughing, which I previously wrote about in Laughing in the face of brain injury, ludicrously hilarious. (Thanks to all the readers who named the term for me as I didn’t know it before.) But I wanted to talk about the other side which bothers me more.

Excessive crying 

In many ways I have improved dramatically in this area. But still I can be overtaken by something, and as no one can understand my speech when I’m crying, it can cause panic.

For example, the other day one of my Dads lifelong friends told me he was going to visit him. He explained how that day he had got the sad news that another of his old friends had lost their battle when cancer. So he didn’t want to keep putting it off, seeing as he and my Dad are in their 80’s there is no time like the present. Seeing as that meant driving well over 100 miles each way to see him, I was touched. I hope when I’m my Dads age I have such loyal friends.

All that was fine, it was when I was trying to tell my partner James what had motivated my Dads friend that got me. I do not know the cancer patient so I wasn’t grieving.  I suppose it was just the sentiment that when someone is in their twilight years, you can’t afford to keep putting things off, as everything can change in a day.

Poor James. He heard the word “died” and had to keep asking me who I was referring too. As I just fell apart, he thought I meant my Dad had died. A few deep breathes and some tea, enabled my to start again.