Crying in public
You should cry in public
You should feel the tears fall down your face while you order your drinks from the waitress. Don’t try to explain. Don’t try to deny it. Take the space.
You should lean on your hand, and stare wistfully out the window at the parking lot and the cars and the sky and feel however you feel.
And if it makes you sad, you should cry.
Don’t try to tell anyone why.
Don’t try to get over the feeling.
Your sadness is a gift. Your mess is a way to occupy space.
Make no apologies. Set no expectations.
Maybe they’ll all think you’re back from a funeral.
Or you just got bad news.
But maybe you haven’t had either of these things.
Maybe you’re grieving the love you never had.
Maybe the enormity of it, the way it has held you back, the way it has imprisoned your soul,
Maybe that is hitting you
Maybe you are brave and sad
And soft
And maybe you have experienced life when everyone around you sees your softness as a threat
Maybe or maybe not
But maybe.
And what if that?
What if.
What if, by some chance, you were washed into an island
Shipwrecked on an unfamiliar land where you did not know the language
Could not even move
And were at the mercy of the folks who brought you into that world
And instead of learning how to love yourself
Just what if you were not.
Over years
You should cry about that
You should cry and cry and cry
It is a tragedy, that someone so small and so soft should be in the clutches of gears and teeth
Even if it was done and over years ago
Nobody thinks of their dead loved one and says
“Well I can’t change it, might as well stop feeling sad”
No! Sometimes a whole age goes by and you still weep for them
Weep for you!
Weep for your deaths!
In the open, into the face of the kind hostess who seats you
In front of the gas pump while you fill your car
In the presence of you friends, loves, family members
And when they ask you what is wrong, tell them you don’t know how to say
Inside you will know
It is your deaths you are mourning
But openly feel the feeling and let them think what they will
We,
Survivors
Have a special weight
The weight of control
We are afraid to lose it, afraid that it will carry us away into another world
Another island of cruelty
But do not confuse that which has already happened
With that which you have worked your whole life to prevent
And instead
Come back to your abandoned self
And feel your round tummy and your wet eyes
And breathe freely
Come back, come back
You miss you
I know you do because I miss me
It is universal that we,
The shipwrecked,
Came into a world that took us from ourselves
And tears will bring us back,
That is why they are so feared-
The supple power of weeping is deep and profound
Give it to yourself, and give it to the world
You should cry in public
You should definitely cry in public