Do the things you cried about two years ago weigh the same as the ones you're crying about now?
Probably not. Provided they're not the same thing, the priceless perspective awarded to us by time reframes everything. I was reminded just now, coming home, of doing the same thing some two years back. I came home, curled up on my yoga mat, and just wept and wept. At the time, the situation didn't seem like anything could be changed (and appeared pretty dire). It strikes me how things have changes (but then, doesn't it always? Shouldn't it?). If you'd told me two years before we'd be having the conversations we're having now, I wouldn't have believed. I thought I knew how things would turn out and I knew it was the bad ending.
Do things you cried about years before have the same fate as what you're crying about now?
It depends. I find, as I get older, the things I cry about are rearranging. Getting harder. There's a lot more crying about death, illness, and overall negative outcomes at 26 than there was at 16. Gloom, when I was a teenager, had a different nuance.
But I digress.
The point is, to quote cult classic Fleabag,
We are, as humans, extraordinarily resilient, or at least have the capacity to be so. If we're smart, we learn to carry the darkness with us, so that the next time evil lurches at you, you don't start screaming your head off in helplessness.
The darkness we carry with us translates (roughly) to come at me, fuckers, I've faced this darkness before. People like to forget, to not burden themselves with the bad things of the past. Or the ones surrounding them now. Or lurking perhaps in the future. We say why. We say I don't even wanna think about that.
I do. Not because I like it, but because it's laying down bricks. Because the chaos and darkness of your life is, unfortunately, non-negotiable. You will be faced with difficult situations. Situations that ask you to step so far out of your depth you'll think you're on a different planet. And no, remaining ignorant, aloof, or in any other way opting for the easy way out will not benefit you when this happens.
I digress, once more. We started with tears. Do you cry? I cry all the time, sometimes from the most trivial shit. I'm not good at arguments or tense situations, and it's neither easy nor pleasant. When you're overwhelmed by emotion, it's sometimes harder to stick to your rational point, you become more vulnerable in some ways. Then there is, of course, the ever-looking accusation that you're only doing it for sympathy or in some way demonstrating terrible weakness.
We didn't coin the term "crybaby" for nothing. It's a certain image. Only weak people cry.
Yet I cry, still. I can't help myself. I get overwhelmed by emotion. By sadness or shame, and cry. I don't know what would happen if I didn't cry. Perhaps I'd explore. Or perhaps it would show up in my life in other, infinitely more toxic ways.
I take on other people's emotions, also. If someone is already crying, I find it hard not to. And so I take great pride in the fact that in more recent situations where circumstance asked me to "be strong", where I realized quickly enough that crying would just make the other person worse, I held myself together. I managed to calm down the people who needed more immediate attention.
It's not all bad. Much as I've struggled with my self-confidence in the past, I've never had destructive or bullying thoughts about myself. My inner voice seldom if ever tells me I'm good for nothing. It's never once suggested anyone or the world at large would be better off without me in it.
Is that because I cry? I don't know. But perhaps there is a link, after all. Maybe crying much by nature allows me to evade the more obvious traps of intense sadness. Perhaps a release happens (other than the obvious airing of emotion) that takes the pressure off. Maybe it has no relation.
Maybe if I knew to go through life without crying, I would be stronger. More together.
But I've learned a thing or two in the last years about the person that I am where all these intense emotions stem, so to speak. I don't see the compassion towards that self in saying, when the world is already gone astray, stop crying like a baby. you're so weak. And perhaps fortunately for me, people who are highly emotional often also have high compassion. I don't really envision telling my hurt self to suck it up, and behave.
Been stuck in my head for a few days. "We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point... of view. :)
