And Then I Started Crying (Hi-5!)

I remember having my Kindergarten love interest over one afternoon and we were watching Disney's Beauty and The Beast. It was the second last scene, where The Beast tells Belle that he loves her, as he closes his eyes and breathes his last. She softly tells him that she returns his affections, as a single tear rolls down her face onto his unmoving chest, mixing in with the rain. At this point, I am sitting on the living room floor sobbing and my soon-to-be-first kiss is wondering what on earth is going on, and asking my mom if I'm ok.

Sigh...I wish that was the only instance of non-private crying in my young life. But, alas, 'tis not the case. I cried all the time. I cried on the school bus, while reading Where The Red Fern Grows. I cried in class when we watched The Green Mile in grade ten English. I cried on stage as they looped Bittersweet Symphony for our graduation ceremony (and I didn't even like high school). And later, when I was in the midst of le divorce, I cried literally all the time. I'm proud to say I've only been the drunk crying girl at the bar twice, and one of those times I had the decency to hide in the bathroom.

It's cathartic. It's healing. It's healthy (usually). And for a long time after my ex and I separated I was unable to cry. I felt dry, numb. My best friend moved away and on our last night hanging out at my place, she hugged me and wept as I awkwardly patted her back and assured her that I was upset too. I was unable to deal with a little bit of sadness, because once there is a tiny crack in the dam, it won't be long until everything crumbles and the villagers are being swept away.

I've evened out through the past few years and I think I now have generally healthy tear-duct activity. Except that night I was balling on the floor because Dana Fairbanks (character on the show The L Word) died from breast cancer. Ok I may have been drunk that time too. Or when I started tearing up at the pub when my friend's dad was visiting and it made me miss my dad. Right, so there have actually been a few times lately that my display of emotion would be considered weird or inappropriate or embarrassing...ughh...

But it appears that that is who I am. I am the weird crying girl. I'm ok with that. I would rather cry and have people look at me strangely and wonder if I am deeply emotionally unbalanced than never cry at all. With the holidays quickly approaching and things in my life lining up for a big change, my emotions are in over-drive right now, and I expect that my outbursts will only increase. But hey, that's what purse-sized Kleenex packages are for.

I just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. Being comfortable with my emotions is something I've been working on for a while, and it will probably be an on-going project. It's funny to think that while I have a blog on the World Wide Web, that anyone can see, and which I constantly blabber on, there are still parts of me that are very much secret, very much closed off. Even I don't know what's going on with me some of the time.

So as I look forward to sleeping in this weekend, I leave you with the Friday Hi 5, and the promise of some kind of sense from this blog in the coming week, and many other exciting adventures to come. Adieu.