My ongoing inability to cry over almost anything was tested again this weekend while watching the pre season friendly match between Preston North End and Liverpool. The tragic deaths of Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva some ten days ago meant that it would be a highly emotional occasion and the bizarre decision of ITV to cover a non-competitive kickabout now appeared to be a masterstroke.
Preston, the club, were wonderfully respectful, as we all knew they would be and you could almost touch the raw emotion from the Liverpool fans in the away end. And they sang the Jota song over and over again: “Oh, he wears the number 20, he will take us to victory. And when he’s running down the left wing, he’ll cut inside and score for LFC. He’s a lad from Portugal, better than Figo don’t you know. Oh, his name is Diogo!”
I did feel emotional, as I well might given my non-existent geographical and familial connections with Merseyside, but at no point did I feel I was about to lose it, as I haven’t done during the many deaths that have occurred in this the darkest of all years. However, there was something different going on this time. I was aware of the emotion and I steeled myself to make sure I didn’t shed a tear, or get anywhere near crying. I cannot think that’s a good thing.
In fact, crying is a good thing for all sorts of reasons, which I am sure you can all work out yourselves. It can be a release or relief, it can be heartbreak; things can just get too much. Long before I discovered the joys of antidepressants, I would blub like a room of luvvy actors. The drugs do work.
It was immediately clear why my tears were suppressed: I had consciously decided they must be. How, I concluded, could I allow the waterworks to come on following the death of a footballer I obviously did not know nor had ever met when they were inactive when the deaths of family members and friends were met with nothing? This had to be about perspective. You could only let the tears flow when someone close to you died.
I didn’t have to work that hard, it has to be said. My reaction to the death of Jota was not one of devastation, I was not ‘gutted’, as people say. Sad? For sure, but nothing more than that.
I didn’t think a lot about why I wasn’t crying after recent deaths, even when they appeared to be piling up. I was more resilient than I realised, that was it. At no point did I have to force myself to stay straight-faced. I kind of did, a teeny-weeny bit, with Jota but how much of that was real and how much was a kind of, “if you don’t cry when someone very close to you dies, then how the hell can you cry when someone who isn’t even remotely close to you dies”? And what happens next? When the next death comes along – and yet another one did come along just last Saturday – then am I down the road of choosing when it is and isn’t okay to cry? I know what’s wrong, really.
My ADHD addled brain won’t settle down, won’t stop thinking even when there should be nothing to think about. There’s nothing natural about creating the mood, the reaction. Yet I can’t help myself.
What will it feel like if the levee finally breaks? I dread to imagine. I’m fearing a post British Red Cross meltdown type situation and, man, that was bad. So, I’m afraid, I need to keep control at all costs. Take the emotion out of nearly everything. Easier said than done, I reckon. It’s a crying shame, except that it isn’t.
