My siblings will readily attest to the fact that as a child, I cried at everything. I remember crawling into my room, climbing up the bunk, and sobbing my face into the pillow. It was dark. I had room to cry.
In the midst of my sniffling, my sister interrupted: hanging off the side rails, staring at me, she asked—“What are you even crying about?” This was one of the first times (of many) that she would intervene when I became hysterical.
“I don’t know,” I sniffled. And I stopped sobbing just to think about it. How astonishingly reasonable her question.
—
Last week I cried listening to a song on my iTunes, narrating to myself how heart-wrenching and beautiful this song was, unraveling its horns and ukulele, its imagery and elephants.
He lay beside me and wrapped his arms tighter around my waist. Eyes closed, smiling.
I closed my eyes and let myself go.
It felt marvelous to cry. To weave in and out of Condon’s trembling voice, and to sob where he nearly did, to gulp and to be so incapacitated by beauty—and to find someone behind you as your eyes blinked open, blurry and wet and deliriously content.
Sobbing is full of upset, and grief. Do not equate this with tears, which often trickle down your cheeks to cement, in memory, what a gorgeous moment you have just lived.
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