TASK #38: CRYIN’ SHAME
“Eveything hurts”. Michelangelo Antonioni
Gentlemen, this is a tough one, maybe the toughest of the year–at least it was for me. Why, because you have to do something that doesn’t come naturally, nor instinctively, nor necessarily voluntarily.
Suddenly I felt this overwhelming sorrow. And a darkness took over, and I started to weep, and I convulsed and I wept, and there was a bitterness in my tears and felt like the floor had dropped beneath me and I couldn’t stop crying.
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Let me take a step back. I am, by my name and inclination, absurdly normal, average. And being an average guy means that you act in an average way, and you live an average life, and on top of that, I am a believer in the baseball adage, “never too high or too low”. I keep my emotions in check, like the average guy. I take a lot of shit–like the average guy, and I repress my feelings. Like the average guy…
But one day, the dam broke. I cried. Sobbed–my shoulders heaving, my head down–and the tears came from some deep place that I can’t name. What made me cry? It wasn’t much.
It was a picture of me when I was younger. I was with my mom, who passed away years ago, and my dad–a sour cuss who met his demise in the 80s, and we were standing in front of a some 18th century schooner, a tourist trap in some northeast city, and we had posed in front of it in the midst of a vacation we took together, a vacation that was wracked with tension, because my mom couldn’t stand my dad sometimes, and one of those times was that
vacation.
But the reason I cried had nothing to do with that. It had nothing to do with my mom or dad or that ugly schooner or that I had to listen to them bitching at each other; I cried because so much life had passed since that picture and I wasn’t going to get it back.
I wasn’t going to get it back and I knew it.
After a bit it would stop, and I’d blow my nose, then that lost lonely feeling would take over again and the tears ran… When I finally stopped I was weak, but incredibly I felt better.
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And suddenly I felt this overwhelming sorrow. And a darkness took over, and I started to weep, and I convulsed and I wept, and there was a bitterness in my tears and felt like the floor had dropped beneath me and I couldn’t stop crying. After a bit it would stop, and I’d blow my nose, then that lost lonely feeling would take over again and the tears ran…
When I finally stopped I was weak, but incredibly I felt better. All of you amateur psychologists can tell me why, I’m sure, but for me it was like emptying bucket that I had been carrying for miles.
TASK:
Find a way to cry. Empty the well.
Photo courtesy of the author.