the biggest crybaby at the party
the reality of emotional dysregulation
The stereotype of the overly emotional girl fits me fairly snug. The emotion in that label of “emotional” is grossly oversimplified to sadness. Think of welling tears, of a dramatic whininess, of a bleeding heart cracking open. That’s the emotion we’ll be focusing on, but for the record, I feel scorching anger and exuberant joy and malicious jealousy all to the same degree of overwhelming intensity. I’m sure one day we will talk about each of those.
I don’t know if I’ve always been a sensitive soul. During my teenage years, I wasn’t quick to cry when reprimanded, although I do remember being vaguely irritated with my sister for the way her tears earned her sympathy while my impassiveness earned me contempt. The vulnerability of crying only seemed like another failure or even an instigator, not something that invoked compassion or care. So, I canned every tear and stowed it away somewhere hidden even to me. My reasons for crying trivial or inconsequential— “I’ll give you something to cry about.” My crying unsavory and inconsiderate— “If you’re going to cry, go to your room.” Once, a partner told me it was unfair for me to cry during arguments because it was emotional manipulation. Again, I found myself apologizing for my tears.
As an adult, I’ve sought therapy—weekly for three years—to better recognize and embrace my emotions (to literally feel my feelings as corny as that shit sounds) and yoga to reunite (or yoke) my mind, body, and soul. The former component was also paired with a mood stabilizer to help ease the dysregulated fire of emotions to better manage the symptoms during the process (e.g., to not cry every day for two weeks straight because it turns out that is an extremely exhausting habit). Since developing better regulatory skills, I’ve been able to stop taking that medication. (No shade to medication. That one just particularly didn’t work for me.)
To paint a vivid picture, and to laugh at myself a bit, here is a short list of some of the more ridiculous times I’ve cried in the past couple of years—and hopefully this makes you feel less dramatic:
The first day my roommate and I adopted a stray cat (then Fiona, now Frank) because I found out feline leukemia exists. To clarify, he did not have it or anything wrong with him, but I was instantly acutely aware and graphically imagining his death.
For 3 hours, inconsolably, when an ex didn’t enthusiastically want to do a puzzle with me. Shortly before, he rescinded the one and only time he told me he loved me, so in hindsight, I think those tears were about a lot more than a puzzle that we did end up doing together.
At a brunch with probably a dozen women in their twenties to fifties celebrating a birthday as each woman shared what she admired most about the birthday girl.
Artists I’ve seen in concert and bawled my eyes out: Lucy Dacus, Tyler Childers, Hozier, Eliza McLamb, Sugarland. Admittedly, live music is always a tear-jerker for me. I even cry every Christmas Eve during church service when we sing “Silent Night.”
While listening to Ina Garten read her memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens, imagining how distraught she’ll be when her husband, Jeffery, dies. to my knowledge, he is perfectly healthy and isn’t at any more of a risk of dying than the rest of us. Nevertheless, the love she so blatantly exudes for her husband, her person, I’m already heartbroken imagining their separation on this side of life when one of them inevitably dies.
My tears have been born from grief (even if imagined like in that last example), fear, fatigue, embarrassment, loneliness, hurt, anxiety, and a million different feelings of despair. But I find it much less common to cry from those yucky feelings recently. Now I cry mostly from love.
I can’t remember the last time I cried from a place of self-absorbed misery. This type of cry typically takes place in my car while listening to Mitski’s “Class of 2013.” It’s a real woe-is-me, I’m the worst person in the whole world and certainly unlovable, type of cry. I’m sure if you were once a teenage girl, you’re familiar. Maybe this soul-crushing sobbing isn’t really happening less, but instead it could be attributed to my faulty memory and emotional impermanence. When I am happy, I can never imagine being sad, and when I am sad, happiness has never existed for me. I’m working on living in that gray space more.
Right now, at least, I am quite happy!
Every year, I cry at videos of the Boston Marathon. The runners spending the last of their energy to carry another to the finish line, their refusal to quit on each other. When they sacrifice their finish time to stop and kiss a loved one. Strangers holding funny signs and cheering for the triumph of humanity. How can you be a dry-eyed pessimist when love like that is so palpable?
Okay, so we’ve established I’m a tried-and-true crybaby. With my reputable credibility, I’d like to vehemently assert that tears are not bad. Crying is not for wussies or sissies or cowards. Crying is for humans. I do not need to suck it up or toughen up. Being ridiculed for my softness like it’s synonymous with weakness always boggles my mind.
Personally, I find it much more alarming when a man recalls his grandpa’s funeral a decade ago as the last time he cried versus a woman sharing she cried at the grocery store because she heard her wedding song over the store’s speakers. I value people that know themselves, people that walk hand-in-hand with their emotions like they’re old companions. To shy away from self-understanding is one of the greatest forms of cowardice.
Why does society boast about hearts made of stone?
Like something unfeeling and frozen is superior to something warm and beating.
-- I will keep my bleeding heart
L.E. Bowman
Although my tears are unpredictable and sometimes disproportionate, I see it as my body communicating to me what my mind isn’t willing to see yet. I spent a lot of years detached from my body, not knowing what I was feeling emotionally or physically. That disconnect resulted in a lot of total meltdowns, one precariously placed block toppling the whole tower. Then a week spent mourning what I had built and refusing to rebuild, out of hopelessness and exhaustion.
Learning to regulate my emotions and find the gray space in my thought processes instead of purely black and white was liberating. It opened doors for me to express myself more accurately and to pursue the things I wanted because I could actually for once identify what I did and did not want based on how it felt to me.
Something I’m struggling with now is not running from my sadness, infrequent and fleeting as it is. I’m not necessarily ashamed of it or all-consumed by it anymore, but I do feel like I’m resisting it. At least this is true for my gut reaction to it. When it rains, I immediately grumble and shake my fist at the sky, but I want to turn my face toward the gloomy clouds and not wish instead for sunshine. The April showers give me many opportunities to work on that.