Tears

She asked, "when was the last time you cried?...."

One of my very close friends used to cry all the time. I would watch her eyes swell into small blue pools of sadness, and a dramatic single tear would roll perfectly down her cheek. Then another. Then another, as though synchronized to look a certain way. She cried delicately, the way women are supposed to cry. She cried from somewhere deep inside her, some soft and gentle emotional space that I kept locked within myself. Her voice never wavered. Her body never quivered. She never gasped for breaths. In fact, if it hadn't been for those tender tears dripping so easily from her eyes, you might never know she was crying. She cried in a way that made you want to hold her, protect her, love her forever. She cried in a way that made the universe stop, and listen, and understand. She cried in a way that could only be described as beautiful.

That is not how I cry. I am a loud-choppy-can't-speak-can-barely-breathe-pain-in-my-soul-that-needs-to-burst-free kind of crier. My face turns bright red. My expressions are not pretty. I am a mess. Which is why I almost never cry in public. In fact, I can think of three times I've cried in front of another person, and even then, I was fairly restrained.

When she asked when the last time I cried was, I realized just how long it's been. I don't mean tearing up. I tear up all the time. I tear up with joy, with an overwhelming sense of the beauty that surrounds me, with laughter, with hope. I tear up at books, and movies, and shows, and commercials, and blogs. I tear up whenever a child repeats something back to me that I have taught them, or says "I love you," or comes over to hug and kiss me for no reason at all. I tear up when I think of all the goodness and sadness of my past, my present and inevitably my future. I tear up when I think of all the goodness and sadness the world has to offer. I tear up thinking of the world, of each of us, of our journey here. I tear up at least a hundred times a day.

But crying is different. I have not cried, not shouted out aches, not felt the burning of tears upon my cheeks in at least two years. I have not allowed myself to embrace that kind of pain. I have not released the wounded animal of my being out into the wild to howl. I have kept it locked up. I have silenced it.

I think of how strange it was to leave your house on Saturday night and not cry. I think of how strange it was to feel so apathetic to something that seemed so crucial and defining. I think of how strange it was to not feel guilty about the only thing in my life I really have to feel guilty about. I worry about what that means. I worry about what kind of a person that makes me.

I should regret it. I should call it a mistake. I should spend my days hiding beneath my covers, crying into my pillow, repenting. But instead, I find no tears, and I wonder when they will come, if they will come. I wonder why they are so unwilling to rise to the surface of my being. I wonder if they are being trapped somewhere inside. I wonder what it will take to let them out, to set them free.

Because I know I need to cry. I know how good that feels. I know that I have stored up moment upon moment of swallowed sobs, and have no means of letting them go. I know that I need to let them go. I know that I need a release, a washing away of all of that unnecessary guilt, and pain, and self-inflicted suffering. I know that I need to drown out the deep rivers of my self doubt. I know that I need to flood the depleted oceans of my soul. I know that even though I do not pray, I am somehow, somewhere, praying for my tears to rain.

And I will take the storm lovingly upon my cheeks, embrace it, no matter where I am, no matter who I'm with, no matter that I will never be the kind of woman who can shed those perfect tears. For that, too, I will weep.