The Blessing of Tears

I was raised to avoid crying. I was raised to "buck-up and be strong". I was taught that others had bigger problems than mine, and that if I let loose with my feelings then all I was doing was making things worse for others.

I especially remember being told this when my parents were divorcing. I was twelve, and my mother's parents had come to help out.Some relative told me that I had to be strong for my mother. A display of emotions was considered undignified and showed a lack of self-control. What my Victorian era grandmother taught me,my beloved grandfather reiterated. He once wrote me a letter in which he said that I was too nice of a girl to have problems. So because i dearly loved and respected my grandfather who was indeed the best of men, I learned to maintain a stiff upper lip when in the presence of most people, and kept my problems to myself or for the therapist who got paid to listen.

During the course of my life I tried to toughen up at least I attempted to figure out what that meant. My father's advice once was that I needed to learn to be "more mechanical". I can do mechanical. I can immerse myself in routines, and aimless ambitions, but I can only do this for so long.

Words on paper became my confidante along with my many feline friends.I crfied alone in the closet with my face burried in to my clothes to muffle the sound. The stifled sobs turned to an anger which spiraled into a rage.

I was so mad one day when i was thirteen that I put my fist through the pane of my bedroom window.
That, of course, got a reaction. Punishment. Lectures about how hard I was making things for my mother. Lectures about how I was too old and too smart to act that way. I cried very angry tears in response.

The rage, of course, was the true part of me that knew i had every right to feel very sad, and that I had every right to cry when I needed to.

It is a solitary life for most of us. We learn to dust off our deep pain while in the presence of others. Perhaps that is the reason I prefer so much time alone. I want to be able to feel myself feel.

Crying never fails to give me relief, and it is always in the midst of my tears that I am reminded once again of the paradox of this life I live- that joy and pain coexist. Something my child-self innately knew, but that my adult-self had to rediscover. Tears are a form of grace that connect me with me.