crying gets the sad out of you ...

crying. 

i feel like that's all i do lately. 

i cry. 

a lot. 

and i often have a song stuck in my head while i cry. it's a song from my childhood from the movie Free to Be You and Me written by Carol Hall. it's called "It's alright to cry." 

It's all right to cry

Crying gets the sad out of you

It's all right to cry

It might make you feel better - Carol Hall

crying empties me of my sad and of my happy and of my everything. because i don't just cry, i weep. and weeping is different. weeping is loud and your body shakes. i don't just weep, i sob. sobbing is when you are inconsolable. 

Raindrops from your eyesWashing all the mad out of you - Carol Hall

sometimes i cry because i am mad. i am not much of a yeller, as SC can attest. and nosy nora says i "give up the mad" too fast. but i find it easier to cry when i am mad than to face the anger. 

Raindrops from your eyesIt's gonna make you feel better - Carol Hall

i think that the sky and the earth need cleansing, and that rain is part of the water cycle. rain is essential to our survival, even if we don't like it. i think that crying is the same thing. crying is essential to our survival - it is a release of emotions that would otherwise eat away at your insides. 

It's all right to feel thingsThough the feelings may be strangeFeelings are such real thingsAnd they change and change and change - Carol Hall

nosy nora was the first person to give me permission to have feelings. i can't tell you how many conversations we have had about feelings, and about how much i hate them. i numbed myself from feelings most of my life. and having them all now is challenging. my biggest problem is identifying feelings as well as naming them. nosy nora asks me how i feel and i stare at her like i was asked if i want a chocolate-dipped pickled anchovy ... how do i FEEL? ummmm ... i don't know. "good" "bad" ... my solution was to look up feeling words and write them in my journal so that i can refer to them. 

Sad 'n' grumpy, down in the dumpySnuggly, hugly, mean 'n' uglySloppy, slappy, hoppy, happyChange and change and change - Carol Hall

now i can name some feelings when i have them. it is getting easier. 

nosy nora also tells me that feelings change. that the feelings ... the intensity of the feelings that i have now will not always be the same. 

It's all right to knowFeelings come and feelings goIt's all right to cryIt might make you feel better - Carol Hall

the intensity of the feelings that i have now is overwhelming, so i am really hoping that nosy nora and Carol Hall are right! 

because i am doing so much crying lately, i have been thinking a lot about crying and asking other people about their experiences of crying. i asked Zed about her experience of crying. 

Zed said: "sometimes i feel silly crying. like it's wasted emotion. but most times i feel so much better. like it's a mental hiccup and the crying gets rid of it. like it washes away those feelings of frustration and madness and guilt. i'm rarely ever sad when i cry, plus it's hell on your makeup. but makeup is easily fixed, and sometimes the feelings - not so much." 

feelings not so much. it's not easy to "fix" feelings because they aren't meant to be fixed. they are meant to be felt. and i learned this the hard way. i am still learning. 

It's all right to cryCrying gets the sad out of youIt's all right to cryIt might make you feel better - Carol Hall

xoxo

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