A week? A month? A year? Can´t remember?
And if couldn´t remember, did that mean being fortunate, since there was no reason to, hence bliss?
When I was younger, I used to think that I had never seen the men in my life (my father, my brothers, or the occasional boyfriend) cry and I was wondering how that was, what that felt like. When asked, they said that even if many times they were sad or mad, the tears just wouldn´t come. I kept pushing, asking, and trying to find the logical process: why they didn´t/couldn´t cry, yet I was so ready to, whenever I felt really sad, or frustrated, or mad, or watched a movie or read a book whose story I could sometimes relate to?
When I was in high-school and even later on, with all the emotional little dramas – boyfriends, break-ups, dating, but also fights with parents or friends, or because of things just not really turning out as expected – crying was somehow a release to me, yet not really a habit. But I did know that after crying, after the exhaustion of shedding tears, there came some peace, some quiet and calm, even some lucidity on the subject matter of said tears. I didn´t look for them, but somehow, after all the welling up, after drying out all the tears, there came a point when there was something to be done, a decision to make, so as to not have any reason to cry again.
And then a few days ago I lost a life long companion and I started crying again. It was that kind of crying that just engulfs you when you least expect it, when you think of something from back when, or when you see or do something that reminds you of, or when you realize you don´t have to do this anymore, because, or when you just talk or think of. So it was not the crying that I used to do when I felt mad or sad, frustrated or broken-hearted. It was not the crying that asked for a solution, for a decision to be made, for a conclusion to draw afterwards.
It was just crying, and as I couldn´t stop or somehow foresee when the next wave would overtake me, and possess me, and I was thinking: how long since I last cried. I couldn´t remember when the last time I had cried had been. I couldn´t place the moment in the last couple of years. There had been years. Years since I hadn´t shed a tear. Did this mean I had had no reason to? That my life had been empty of sadness or madness or hurt or frustration? Or that I had no more excuses to? That I had made the best decisions, and everything was running smoothly and as it was supposed to?
The thing is, crying reveals emotion, feeling, intensity, even impulse, momentous lack of control. So not just not crying – but the lack of memory thereof – in such a long time that it´d been forgotten means what? I am not really sure, I and I still haven´t decided how to take it. Was my life so good that I couldn´t remember when I´d last cried? Did it stop being so good now that I had been crying lately? Had I been so deprived of emotions that I´d had no reason to cry? Was I just so devoid of feelings that tears just wouldn´t come?
Maybe this is just a turning point, a watershed moment – never better said – to get in touch with some part of the reality or the inner world that had been shut down and needed a little bit of healthy meditation.
Nefelibata 