Crybaby

I plunge my face into the stopped sink. The water is cold and refreshing. I can immediately feel the swelling recede. Hands planted on the edge of the vanity, I breathe deeply, thinking of everything. Thinking of nothing.

The number of times I've cried at work over the past year is incalculable. I cried to get the job, and after twelve months, I cried to get out of the job. I cried when my subordinates wouldn't listen to me and when I felt my superiors were expecting too much.

Being a depressed warehouse manager isn't easy.

When I was fifteen years old, I found myself crying at work. I can't remember why, but I recall the humiliation I felt afterwards.

As is the plight of all teenage girls, I barged in the front door of home, fell dramatically onto the couch, and began to wail my woes to Mom, who I knew would surely have the answer.

"And the worst part is I have to go back there in an hour! I'm on a split shift today. How am I going to walk back into that place with any shred of dignity after that?"

Mom was never much of a touchy-feely matriarch, so she told me about the cold water trick rather than pulling me into a maternal hug.

"A splash of cold water on the face after a cry will bring the swelling in your eyes down immediately."

Here I am, 24 years later, thrusting my entire head into a basin of ice water, hoping it will help.

The staff bathroom was filled with cleaning products and first aid kits. All half used up and disorganized, "I should really deal with that," I think, but then remember that I have just resigned from my position as Warehouse Manager. The disarray of the first aid kits is no longer my problem.

Guilt is a pain in the side that, for people-pleasers, never truly goes away. Therapy can help rationalize the situation, and atonement can ease the strain, but that tiny nugget of guilt inside your bones will never recede.

I have failed. I couldn't do the job. I couldn't handle the stress of it. I was too easy on the staff - let them get away with labour cost murder.

I start to cry again, so I take another dunk in the sink.

Dad hated it when I cried. It was an inconvenience. My mom tolerated my crying, but to this day, I get the feeling she is silently willing me to stop my infernal blubbering each time I turn on the waterworks in her general vicinity.

It's all OK. My crying makes me feel better about a situation, even if it is also causing me embarrassment. I like the feeling of crying. Of just letting go of every inhibition and crying that shit out. It is cathartic and freeing.

So many of us were raised to believe that crying is a girl's endeavour. 

This is problematic in so many ways.

1. Boys are made to believe that there is something wrong with them if they cry over emotionally upsetting situations. In turn, this creates generation after generation of men who do not know how to properly address their emotions because they've been spending an eternity trying to suppress those emotions so as not to cry in public.

2. When we tell the boys it's not OK to cry because crying is for girls, what are we really saying to those girls? Oh, it's OK to cry because you are less than. You don't have to be strong, so crying is obviously something you're just going to do. Crying equates to weakness, so let's give it to the girls.

This is at least how I felt growing up, which made the idea of crying that much worse. Every time I cried in public, I was confirming the low standards that society had for me. I couldn't control my emotions.

It's taken me half a lifetime, but I've come to terms with my crying and am finally seeing this action's power. When one cries genuinely, not for gain or attention, but to truly feel something, that is a courageous act.

Now, imagine your boyfriend just broke up with you in some public space, or maybe you found out you flunked a course at community college, or the doctor has just told you you're morbidly obese, and you must stop eating cookies at midnight lest you be in for some serious health problems in your future. These were all scenarios in my life where I broke down crying in public and felt that deep pang of shame and simultaneous relief almost immediately.

There are three different types of tears when we cry. Basal tears lubricate the eyes, and reflex tears rinse away potentially harmful aggravations to the eyes, such as onion fumes, smoke or dust. Emotional tears are produced when you are experiencing intense emotion.

Emotional tears have superpowers. 

At least, they seem to. Do you know that feeling after a good long cry? That sensation of peace and contentment? Even if you hadn't accomplished anything from the cry or were able to resolve the issue at hand, you still feel better.

That's because emotional tears are chock-full of proteins and hormones. The lacrimal gland, responsible for tear production, whips up a cocktail of tears rich in cortisol and natural painkillers called leucine enkephalin.

This helps foster that good feeling after you cry, even when you're not feeling so good.

We cry to release something pent up inside us.

Crying does not make us less than. Crying does not make us look weak.

Instead, if we are brave enough to let the emotion out and deal with the feelings right then and there, we are much stronger than those trying to bottle everything up to appear strong.

I cry because I'm strong, so I'll keep on crying, healing, and learning to move through the difficult parts of the world.