Crying~It's Not for the Faint of Heart

I'm an emotional person. I don't know if I cry more than the average person, but I think I tend to cry at inopportune moments. 

This past week one of these inopportune moments occurred at my job. My day job has been stressful and frustrating lately. There have been staff changes, schedule changes—pretty much every day I go in I am faced with a long day of chaos. At the end of one of these particularly long days I ended up getting into a spirited discussion with my new boss. 

Feelings of frustration, exasperation that I wasn't being heard, and anger at the patronizing tone and bullshit excuses that were being thrown my way all accumulated. I had a brief vision of telling my boss exactly where he could stick his job and giving my fellow co-workers a one-fingered salute as I dashed for the exit. The daydream was satisfying.

The reality is I like having health insurance coverage.

So I pushed the anger down and plunged back into reality to have a very uncomfortable confrontation in a workplace environment. Except, the feelings were all still there. I had crunched them all down, but they were dying to get out. So my eyes started to water. I felt it and ignored it.

Blink. Blink.

And then my bottom lip did this quivering thing. 

I bit on it and trapped it between my teeth. 

But not before my boss saw it. 

He gave me a horrified look—oh no, crying female. "Don't get upset."

This comment heaped on top of the patronizing tone only made things worse. "I'm not upset," I forced out in a measured and even voice. I took a deep breath and a second to center myself. I wished I could have explained to him that I literally had rage leaking out of my eyeballs. That, no, he didn't make me cry. I made myself cry by deciding not to fly off the handle. I wouldn't let the anger out, so it converted itself into something else and tried to slip out some other way.

Of course, I didn't explain this, but I did take the opportunity of him being thrown off balance by the "almost tears" for a few moments to speak my piece. 

Upon reflection, I thought of all of the other inappropriate moments where I shed a few tears during the course of my life. Because that's what I do, when something in my life happens I get a recurring slide show of every other little thing in my life that went wrong or embarrassed me. 

My reflection on these situations made me realize that crying gets a bad rap. It's looked on as a weakness and mostly a very feminine thing. If you're crying about something you obviously can't handle it. You're a basket case and no one wants to listen to you.

Thankfully, I married a man who doesn't discount me when I'm being emotional about something. If I'm worked up and crying, I think he listens more carefully. He won't write me off, he'll ask me what's going on. It wasn't always like that. I think I did have to prove to him that I can have a rational conversation about something while I'm crying, sometimes I just can't control it. And if I can't be myself with my one true love then what is the point of anything?

Some moments that I have shed a few tears that maybe were not ideal:

The night I lost my virginity.

Technically it wasn't even at night. It was midafternoon. And it happened to be with my now husband. I'm not sure why I cried. It didn't hurt, although I think I scared the shit out of him and he thought he mortally wounded me. There was so much build up to this one moment in time. And then it happened. I loved this man so much. I still do and I did even before we had sex. But something about it just wrenched my emotions out of me and I wound up crying as I laid in his bed.

I couldn't explain all of that at the moment. And I am sure I'm romanticizing a lot of it. But there was so much love and emotion welled up inside of me that I wept openly. Probably not what any guy wants to experience, but it was an honest reaction.

Our wedding night.

Again, not really the usual reaction that a girl has to marriage. It wasn't like a replay of the night I lost my virginity because we didn't even have sex that night. It had been a whirlwind of a week. Emotions ran high. Lots of money was shelled out. We made it to the finish line. I was a little drunk, my ribs were bruised (perhaps broken) from the torture device I wore under my gown. I was exhausted. I was happy. I was overwhelmed. 

I was crying next to my husband of ten hours in a hotel room bed at 3am. 

This was a huge milestone in my life. One I planned for and dreamed of for a long time. And it was over. Now what?

"Now we're married," the ever practical Mr. McKay replied in the dark to his weeping wife beside him.

"But, it's over, what do we do now?"

"Go to sleep."

He was right. I slept and life went on. Sometimes I think I get so overwhelmed by the next step and just life in general that I don't know how to process it.

Playing roller derby.

I know what you're thinking, "Of course you cried during roller derby, you broke your ankle in three places last year." I didn't cry when I broke my ankle. It didn't even hurt until the next day. I did cry when they told me it was broken and I realized I was going to miss most of the season, but I don't think that's a very unusual thing, plenty of people would cry about that.

This season I am back and I've hit a good stride. I went from inexperienced newbie, never getting rostered for any games, to someone who is playing in all of the games. A team, B team, I've played in a lot of games this season and enjoyed the hell out of every single one of them. 

My first A team game was in August. We drove five hours to get there. We left our husbands and wives behind, our kids and our jobs, and we took a crazy road trip. We were playing a team that outranked us. We were tired, but we were using everything we've been working on this season. When the whistle blew at the end of the first half I followed my teammates into the locker room and I was swamped with emotion. 

At this time last year, I was broken. At this time last year, my team was not playing like this. We'd all worked really hard in one year to get where we were and I was so proud. My eyes misted over as we filed into the locker room.

"Are you crying?" a concerned teammate asked me.

"No," I lied, as a tear escaped and ran down my cheek. "I just love you guys so much. I love playing with you."

"Oh, man, she's crying!"

"I'm not!" I was.

"Now I'm crying," more than one person echoed.

There were lots of sweaty group hugs. And we played even harder the second half, we barely lost and we over-played everyone's expectations—even our own.

Other things that make me cry: kittens, really good endings to books, sports documentaries I watch with my husband...

The list could go on. But the thing is I laugh a lot too. I smile a lot. It's really easy to be my friend, just be nice to me and we're good. I don't want to paint the picture that I am some kind of sobbing lunatic all the time. 

My emotions are always bubbling at the surface and I have a hard time hiding them. But my point is, crying gets a bad wrap. Not every person who cries is weak. Sometimes people are just trying to control themselves from hip checking you into the wall. 

The next time you cry, don't apologize for it. And the next time someone cries in front of you, ask them why they're crying. Their answer might surprise you.