I'm Pretty Cool

No, but really. I cry all the time.
Happy, sad, angry, excited, grieving or celebrating: I cry.

The darker side:

I used to think crying meant you were weak and I thought that if you let people see those moments of "weakness" they would think less of you.

I was a sensitive kid. I was easily reduced to tears. My mom, raised by an alcoholic single mom, was terrified of emotions. She would say to me "Do you have to cry about everything?"

So I stopped.

As someone who has perfected both the "I'm fine, everything's fine" convincing smile and the passive resting bitch face, I can tell you that shoving your emotions into little manageable compartments takes a lot of energy. Eventually, whatever you're feeling starts to spill out of its neat pile in the corner and creep into your awareness wrapping its tentacles around your heart until it cracks open.

I can either let the emotion pass through me and cry gracefully, messily, gratefully.

Or I can hide it until it becomes too big and it crushes me.

So I cry a lot.