journal-04/13/01

04/13/01

why do i feel like i have to have someone give me permission to cry? it pisses me off just thinking about it. it's not socially acceptable to cry... we only cry in front of certain people...

(the other night i had this funny thought that since i hadn't yet written any entries for april, maybe i could go the whole month. obviously that's shot to hell.)

anyway.. i'd like to put some quotes here. first, from gustave flaubert: "tears are to the heart what water is to a fish." (see also the quotes section for more from a little book (ha) called flaubert's parrot...)

in other words... tears are necessary.

i just happened to be carrying along SARK's book transformation soup, and i just happened to turn to this page while tears were streaming down my face so fast that i couldn't really read what i was looking at anyway:

"we are afraid to cry.
we are afraid to be seen as weak, or falling apart, or not fun(!) to be with.
we cry, and then apologize. we only cry in front of certain people. we only cry when we're alone, or we can't cry.
crying is not spoken of enough.
we must let go and tumble through our interiors with no handholds, and fall limply down, our clothes damp from tears.
i think that until we cry as often as we laugh, we are not fully alive.
cry for no reason.
our tears are the waterfall of the soul and it is our right to experience and express sadness and other feelings through tears.
don't block tears.
when you feel that distinctive tingle behind your eyes, let the tears out.
your tears live inside of you and want to flow freely.
no more apologies for tears!"

sometimes i need a good cry just as much as i need a good laugh-- even more so, because good laughs are easier to come by than a good cry. sometimes i'll put in a certain movie or i'll listen to some certain music that i'm certain will make me cry.

sometimes it doesn't work...

and sometimes, all it takes is for something so simple and supposedly harmless to happen, or for someone to say something that triggers a series of thoughts in my mind-- and then before i know it, i'm shedding tears faster than i can breathe.

this happened tonight... when the lady at h&r block told me i owed money for taxes. it was just the last straw for some things that happened this week, some emotional-- and then just me, sinking into my emotional self and nearly drowning.

so i sat in the car and drowned in my tears for a while, letting out the heaving sobs, letting my face get all puffy and red-- not caring...

funny how this odd sort of pain feels good to unleash. it's like i'm releasing demons.

i'm not happy all the time. i'm not sad all the time. i laugh way more than i cry, but when i cry it's typically a long time coming, so it's typically big. really big. i'm not talking about the little tear that escapes for the hallmark commercial... it's deeper than that, when the sobs that cause your whole body to convulse somehow grip you and you feel nothing else-- you desire nothing else except the release, uninhibited, real.

i'm possibly the most real person you'll ever know.

so.