Why I Don’t Cry at TV Anymore

I used to cry at every Lifetime movie. I would cry whenever an old (or young) person died on a doctor show. I would cry at Pampers commercials. But I don’t cry anymore. This really bugged me for a while because I thought I was getting jaded. But I finally figured out the reason why.

It’s because tragedy on TV is a straight line. You can see it coming a mile away, you can prepare yourself for it, you can indulge in the big cry when the main character gets killed or the baby is born. But by the time you are in your 40s, you know that life is anything but a straight line and that bad shit happens without soundtracks and catch phrases. And so it’s a bit hard to get too excited about TV people anymore.

We celebrated my niece’s 30th birthday this weekend. It was a great, lively family party, just like they always are. But her mother was missing, lost to leukemia three years ago, a disease no one saw coming. While in the kitchen, I happened to glance at the bookshelf and saw a beautiful young woman smiling back at me from her funeral program — another life lost, an athlete who never smoked a day in her life taken by lung cancer in her early 20s.

I know too many parents who have lost children, children who have suffered from all kinds of terrible conditions, wives who have lost husbands to cancer and freak accidents, people who have suffered from rare diseases. I’ve been around the block enough to know that there is always something different around the corner.

I used to think people had mid-life crises because they were bored or because they wanted to reclaim their youth in the face of the finality of growing old. But now I know why people really lose it in their 40s: It’s because they have seen enough to know that life can blindside you at any moment. And it is really hard to accept that shit.

I remember a beautiful young girl named Wendy who worked for me at Macromedia when I was almost 30. It was the beginning of summer and she showed me a huge mole on her back that she wanted to get removed before bikini season. That mole was stage 4 melanoma. I was sitting in the cube next to her when she got the call.

Months later, she and her mom were living in my apartment complex while she was undergoing experimental treatments at UCSF. We had breakfast together at a local coffee shop one morning. I was tired, dreading going into the office, feeling sorry for myself and all I had to do. As we got up to leave she said to me, “You don’t know how much I wish I could just walk to work with you right now.”

I have never forgotten those words. They are a talisman for me against depression, anxiety or self-pity. As much as I want to feel down about my life, feel annoyed at my kids or stressed about work, if I can remember those words I can see the staggering beauty in a San Francisco sunset, bask in the sweet scent of my babies’ hair, enjoy the elegant symmetry of a fall leaf. If I think of Wendy, I know I am blessed.

I am here. And that is enough.