The Tears That Got Me Here

In praise of crying

Hi Sweet Community,

Something I’ve been realizing lately–Gaining my composure is never a gain. Nothing of real value is lost when I sob in the veggie section of the grocery store, a stranger’s gentle hand resting on my back. I, like the avocados, can measure my readiness by my softness. Life is ripe. Sweet and perfect and almost over, for all of us. 

Someday not so far away, everyone alive right now will graduate from the world, many of us having lived believing we were strangers, oblivious to the fact that we had all along been in the same class. Had the same century as a teacher. Just different beliefs about who was or wasn’t a bully. I adore this brief and clumsy life. And because of that, I cry all of the time. No matter how the world begs,  I refuse to be a liar, and nothing tells the truth better than my tears. 

What wouldn’t I give to sit with each one of them at the same time? Every tear that ever rivered out my eyes filling flower vases, sea glass bottles, bear-shaped honey jars. Oh the thank yous I would whisper to the tears wiped from my face by other people’s tender hands. The backflips I would do to celebrate the proof that the tears I cried for grief and the tears I cried for beauty were the same. Because of that, I no longer wish away my hardest days. Spinning out, a kind of pirouette. Losing hope, a kind of rest. 

I’ve spoken so much about my joy these past years, I sometimes fear I’ve not spoken enough about the tears that got me here. How my therapist said, You can’t shut yourself off to grief without also shutting yourself off to joy. Think of it like a kink in a hose. Stop the flow of sadness, you stop the flow of happiness at the same time. Once, after a break-up, I replaced the sand in my hourglass with the water from my eyes so time would pass faster, and it did. Once during a panic attack my tears chased the most wounded part of my past out of my nervous system for good. Crying is how I live through what I think I can’t survive. Crying is how I let go of what I think I cannot let go.  

I have a friend, who when I met her eighteen years ago, told me I came on too strong. “It’s not appropriate to ask someone what makes them cry twenty minutes after you’ve met,” she said, laughing at the social flaws that have made my life what it is. Do I even know how to ask someone what they think about the weather if it’s not the weather of their heart? The storms that make them who they are? All I know is once or twice a week for years now I have thought about a poem written by my friend Cristin, titled “The First Checkup After My Mother Died” from her book, “How To Love the Empty Air.” The entire book is stunning. Sharing the poem below, with love & tears.

Andrea 🖤

The First Checkup After My Mother Died
by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

The doctor noticed me fidgeting with my ears
like a toddler, and asked if he could look at them.

Yes, I told him, they had been bothering me,
and I didn’t know why.

After the examination, he asked if I had been
through something traumatic recently—

a breakup, or a loss of a job. Yes, I told him,
not wanting to explain. How did you know? 

Well, he told me, this type of infection
is most commonly among people who have

gotten in a pattern of holding back tears.
If you don’t allow those tears to drain the way

they are supposed to, they stay inside, cause a lot of pain.
Do you think this is what’s happening to you? he asked.

Yes, I nodded,
and held back my tears.

Thank you for walking beside me on this journey, friends. If you’re a paid subscriber, or if you’ve purchased my books, I can’t thank you enough for your generosity.

Thank you for being here.