I am an ugly crier.  I’ve always envied those pretty girls who still look great while the tears roll slowly down their cheeks, but every bit of make-up stays in place, the nose doesn’t run and the face doesn’t turn red.  I am more like the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Meg Ryan loses the boyfriend and is throwing Kleenex all over the room.  It’s one of the reasons I don’t like crying in front of other people.  There are other reasons why I very seldom cry in front of others but I’m working on them.

For instance, sad movies make me cry.  I just finished a movie with a terribly sad ending and I had to work to just let myself cry.  My throat gets tight, I can’t breath and I’m trying to hold things back.  So tonight I worked to just let go and it ended up being a good cry.  I’ve always been a bit over sensitive, something my parents made fun of and so I was always embarrassed when I would cry over a good story or a good movie.  So I learned not to let go.  And I assumed that others would also make fun of me so I spent years holding in the tears.  After a while, quite frankly, this began to hurt, literally.

In the past,  I would just hold everything in for as long as I could.  Holding in sad cries, angry cries, frustrated cries and every once in a while the dam would leak and let some of it out.  Then I would put a finger in the dike and try to hold it all in again.  This happened again and again.  When I got married, I of course assumed Doug would make fun of me crying over stuff and it wasn’t like that at all.  He hated to see me cry because he wanted me to be happy.  He hated to see me sad.  So, again, I would stuff it all in because I didn’t want him to feel bad.  And the cycle would begin again.

What has taken me all these years to figure out is that crying is part of who we are as human beings.  It allows us to show so many emotions – sorrow, anger, fear, joy.  To try to stuff all of that inside keeps others from seeing who we really are.  Sometimes I just need to cry.  Maybe the week has been overwhelming or I’m tired or I’ve experienced something really sad.  Crying, just like laughter can be a release.  In fact, in the past, if I laughed really hard about something, it would turn into a cry, allowing all of those stuffed in emotions to spill out.  The unexpectedness of this reaction would cause me to try to control the laughter because I didn’t want to be caught crying at crazy times.  So just staying neutral about things seemed easier, until the cycle began again.

Most people assume that those who are depressed cry all the time, but that’s not necessarily true.  Most of the time it’s feeling nothing.  However, the stuffed in feelings are always there, ready to rear their ugly head.  The intensity of crying could be overwhelming, releasing a plethora of emotions, leaving you in a dark hole.  At this point you’re working to keep the crying stuffed in to stay away from that awful place.  The problem is that if you don’t face and release those emotions the cycle just goes on an on.  Learning to cry when I felt the need rather than waiting, along with other strategies has really helped me with this.

So, in my evolution as a human being, I’m allowing myself to cry.  And laugh. I usually just tell Doug I need to cry or that I’m sad and whether or not I want to be alone. And I’m learning to laugh loudly and not be afraid of crying or embarrassing myself.  In the long run, it’s helping me to avoid those explosions of emotions.  But I’m still working on getting over the ugly cry face,