All Together Now
I can count on one hand the few people who have seen me really cry. I mean sobbing, heaving crying. We’ve all been there at one time or another. That cry reserved for deaths in the family, having your heart broken, getting into your first car accident with your friend’s neighbor’s mailbox, or accidentally letting go of a balloon if you’re under the age of five.
And yet, to even those who have been there to hand me tissues (or their entire shirt, you know who are you, thank you) to wipe the mascara running down my face, I tend to give off this persona that I have all of my shit together, or so I’ve been told. I would like to release a public service announcement that I do not, in fact, have all of my shit together. I embarrass myself regularly whether it’s tripping and falling on the treadmill at the gym, or pouring lemonade rather than milk into my cereal because I had yet to put in my contacts that morning to distinguish between the two cartons in the fridge.
The truth of the matter is that no one is completely safe from that day when they just want to scream, “Fuck it! It’s not fair! I’m sick of everything and I’m fed up! If there is a God then why was Happy Endings cancelled by NBC after only 3 seasons?!”
But crying some days does not make me weak, and not crying other days does not make me heartless.
I’ve seen girl friends, boy friends, boyfriends, even total strangers on the bus, break down and start crying. And it’s terrifying. But also humbling. Because nobody has their shit completely together. Most unnerving of all is when I see my parents, my seemingly invincible parents, fumble just a bit. Apparently adding thirty years to my age will only solve so much.
My freshman year of college I was told, “You seem to think that you’re unique in situations. Well, you’re not.” As condescending as it sounds typed out now, it wasn’t meant to sound that way when it was originally said to me, (I think? I hope). I’ve found this line to be reassuring and I’ve repeated it to other friends and my siblings on their various breaking-down-crying occasions.
For whatever reason I’m crying this month, (I’m being generous here. And no, that semi-monthly timing is not period related. I just have a lot of feelings…), it’s probably not the first time someone has cried because their attraction for someone is not reciprocated, or they find themselves in a hurtful argument with someone they care about, or they fumble an important job interview, or maybe they just feel like time is moving a bit too quickly or maybe not quick enough.
The problems I’ve encountered in my twenty years of living have been more trivial than anything else. Difficult experiences, sure, but nothing so horrible that I haven’t eventually been able to get a handle on it. And while they seem trivial in retrospect, these problems were all-encompassing at the time of their original occurrence. So, truly they are learning experiences as I reflect back on them now. Nothing to overly complain about, though I tend to find a way.
But whatever it may be, I’m not alone. Which means someone else out there is not alone. Except for the lemonade in the cereal incident. That may have just been me.
