As I watched some mindless tv (The Thirteenth Warrior) the other day I saw a scene that made me cry. This is not a sign of the coming apocalypse nor are the gods plotting my demise. I do cry but only in certain places and certain company. The wheels began to spin and it truly sank in. I have been close to the darkness and in defiance of it all I spit in deaths face and screamed out loud but shed no tears. In the service of others I have spilt blood, gave blood and tried to stem the flow of it without shedding a single tear. Yet some scene in a movie makes me cry, WTF? Forget all the macho bravado and know: we all cry. To many times we feminize it or class it as weak yet nothing is further from the truth. Still I do not cry (nor do I feel like I am going to) in many places and times. Hummm? Then the comfort safety and solitude of my world gleamed in like the waking sun. We all have been hurt but with every ounce of our very being we refuse to cry in front of the offender. Then when we are safe we explode into an ocean of tears. Is it the last ditch to save face and ensure we survive to not cry? Is it the compartmentalization and “time and place” for it that controls us? We are taught from birth to never let em see you cry and by God you won’t!!! Now we are at the “time and place” part of it. Only our closest friends see us cry and only when we are “safe” do we cry. Safety seems like an easy enough word but it is more than we ever comprehend fully. Safe is where we drop the armor, fall to our knees and let it all out. Safe is that hug or hand shake that in the blink of an eye releases a river of tears and emotion. Safe is that food that helps us heal, that look of total support and that blanket of security that beckons us to lay our burden down. With all these we still must have one additional piece that we over look blindly. WE must have the peace inside ourselves to cry. Nothing is more cathartic than a good cry but we must be at the correct place to reap its true benefit. We cry for any number of reasons; fake, real or heartfelt they must be honest to heal. Honesty, there is a concept we push all the way to back of our being. For protection, self preservation or merely selfishness we hide the honesty. But here we are, safe, with trusted friends in our fortress of solitude and that spark ignites the water works. No matter what it is, how bad it is or the certainty of outcome honest crying often helps. Never be afraid of it nor hide it. We all do it, just never forget where you do it or why but moreover never allow anything to cloud the trust that someone has placed in you to cry in front of you
Several conversations held over the last week led me to this entry. Relationships, life, friends, work and life in general revolve around our evaluation of choices versus consequences yet we fail miserably at being honest with ourselves. Few know this horrible truth as well as I do but we sometimes cannot get past it. Why is it we can lay down our life for others but we do little to keep ourselves happy let alone make choices to make ourselves happy. It hit me when the call came and the voice on the other end was near complete and utter demise over a choice which to me was crystal clear. Without being the “I told you so” person I listened and allowed them to talk themselves into it. Very often we just need to “hear it come out of our own mouth” to truly grasp the reality of what lies ahead. Once the journey moved off the brink of oblivion to a “comfortable numbness of reality” the question I feared most was asked: “Why didn’t you tell me?” Five simple words that burn like fire and...
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