Sunshine and 55 degrees of rain-free goodness. We went for a walk.

Crying Gets the Sad Out of You

I’m a crier.

I cry when I’m sad, mad, frustrated, over-tired, sick, angry, my feelings are hurt, any remotely heart-wrenching moment of a book, TV or movie and probably some times I can’t think of right now.

When I was younger I would sometimes curse myself for being “too sensitive” because people sometimes told me that: I was too sensitive.

Who even says that? Compared to what? Maybe they weren’t sensitive enough. Why isn’t that considered a negative quality? All those people should be rounded up and publicly flogged. Then we’ll see who cries.

You can sense that not only am I over it, I now feel it is my lifelong mission to help individuals who are uncomfortable around crying people experience a moment of personal growth by having me cry in front of them.

It helps that I live with a man who doesn’t blink twice when I cry. If my feelings are hurt he gives me a hug and says nice things about me and if it’s because of a hurt puppy or that scene in The Whale Rider where Paikea does her speech for her Grandfather about how it’s nobody’s fault that she’s a girl that makes me cry even thinking about it, he gives me a hug and says nice things about me.


Sprout from the Fall Bulb-Tacular

I also come from a family of criers. My cousins are the best. We sit around when we’re all together and try to outdo each other on the most humiliating public crying experience:

“I cried at the DMV.”

“Oh yeah? I cried at my parent-teacher conference.”

Then we all laugh and argue about who had to be carried out on a stretcher after Steel Magnolias.

With books and movies I usually sniffle a bit but don’t really fall apart. About once a year I am majorly undone by a show or movie and most recently this was with Dr. Who at the end of season two when (spoiler alert for a show that originally aired in 2006) we lost Rose Tyler. Wah, Rose Tyler. What’s the Doctor going to do without Rose Tyler? He’s already started his 2nd season without her so I’m guessing just fine. But still.

Other books and movies that particularly undid me that I can think of right now: A Prayer for Owen Meany, Pan’s Labyrinth and that episode of Angel where Angel turned human and spent the day with Buffy all happy and doing human things but then had to be turned back into a vampire and Buffy wouldn’t remember their day together.

I talked to one of my weepy cousins the other day, the one that cried at the DMV, and she told me she was getting ready to watch a movie with her daughter, Finding Neverland. Even though I was really pissed that no one warned me how sad that movie is, I didn’t let on. I just said, “Oh, it’s really good.”

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