When I was a little girl I used to cry as all children do in order to get what I wanted. Sometimes it worked, but most of the times it didn’t. I remember at some point hurting myself badly and starting to cry from the top of my lungs. That’s when it happened. My father came up to me and told me that only weak people cry. One should never cry, one should never allow anyone else to see their weakness, one should always be brave and never let tears fall down their cheeks. For some reason everything he said to me made sense and I stopped, or maybe it was the way he said it. The point is I hardly ever cried after that discussion and if tears were threatening to invade my cheeks I used to run away so no one could see me.
Years have passed and by the time I was a teenager many people around me thought I was inhumane. I never cried. I went through a lot: witnessing deaths, diseases, suicides, pain, my own pain, going through the normal phases a teenager goes through and nothing. Nothing could touch me and nothing could make me cry. At first it was kind of cool, to be the one who’s strenght was unbeatable, but after a while the layer of pain mixed with tears gathered in a deep corner, got thicker and thicker. I couldn’t stand being next to people who cried. At first it was because I thought they were weak, but when I grew up it was because it made me very uncomfortable to be around them. I never knew how to react or reach out to the person in front of me who was pouring their soul out, so I think feeling uncomfortable is a little to nicely described. It took me years to understand and accept that it’s ok to cry in public sometimes and that crying isn’t necesarily a way of showing everyone your weak spots.
But I still don’t cry. The minute I understood that it’s ok for everyone else to cry was the minute I understood that it was ok for me not to. Who knows, maybe I am Chandler from Friends, who needs “Chicken soup for the soul”. And speaking of, to get my point of view, watch this and you will understand the whole picture while having some laughs. Hahahaha! 🙂
