Quarterflashing
I worry sometimes that I have lost the ability to cry. Like maybe one really can Quarterflash themselves through experience and emerge with a hardened heart and the ability to swallow back any tears, even when a moment or a day or a week is heartbreaking. When one focuses on becoming stronger can we reach a point of strength equals numbness or indifference?
Today I should be sad and hurt because there are a lot of things in my immediate universe that are pulling at my spirit instead of lifting it. In the past it didn't take a lot and, in fact, maybe too little to make this grown man cry but now it seems the ridiculous does and the meaningful can't. My most recent example? I watched all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights on Netflix and I cried like a bastard at the episode where Matt Sarenson's father died in Iraq. I was balling and even shouting at the screen, "Jesus Christ, Coach Taylor, would you just hug the kid?!" I can cry at that. But someone breaking my heart? A reflection on the past that still leaves an echo of pain? That doesn't make me cry anymore. Has time, healing, experience, anti-depressants, and Vitamin D sopped up my tears?
A part of me wants to cry today because there are pieces and scattered elements that have me feeling hopeless. But two years and counting has toughened me up. I've cried those tears at a pop song level into pillows I bought amid a separation, move out, and divorce. The Costco pillows that were the needed item you never wanted to think about buying on a solo trip so you could take them home and place them in a bed you didn't really think would be empty for prolonged nights in a row. And then when the bed is full it's not the same because it's not about heart or true joy. It's just about sex, which in a way is it's dose of Quarterflash -- there they are again -- with a bolstering of the defenses and a drying of the cheeks.
I wake often to the knowledge that my best efforts to be this new version of me were forced even as they were eventually embraced. After the embrace has come the gratitude even for the experiences that pushed me to the difficult places I never wanted to go to. But a part of me misses the guy that could have shivering lips and anxiety, that felt so deeply that it became as physical as it was emotional. He wasn't healthy but he was human and these days I feel like my humanity has been replaced by something else.
Today, I suppose, would be as good as any to cry. But right now it would seem I have forgotten how.
J
Today I should be sad and hurt because there are a lot of things in my immediate universe that are pulling at my spirit instead of lifting it. In the past it didn't take a lot and, in fact, maybe too little to make this grown man cry but now it seems the ridiculous does and the meaningful can't. My most recent example? I watched all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights on Netflix and I cried like a bastard at the episode where Matt Sarenson's father died in Iraq. I was balling and even shouting at the screen, "Jesus Christ, Coach Taylor, would you just hug the kid?!" I can cry at that. But someone breaking my heart? A reflection on the past that still leaves an echo of pain? That doesn't make me cry anymore. Has time, healing, experience, anti-depressants, and Vitamin D sopped up my tears?
A part of me wants to cry today because there are pieces and scattered elements that have me feeling hopeless. But two years and counting has toughened me up. I've cried those tears at a pop song level into pillows I bought amid a separation, move out, and divorce. The Costco pillows that were the needed item you never wanted to think about buying on a solo trip so you could take them home and place them in a bed you didn't really think would be empty for prolonged nights in a row. And then when the bed is full it's not the same because it's not about heart or true joy. It's just about sex, which in a way is it's dose of Quarterflash -- there they are again -- with a bolstering of the defenses and a drying of the cheeks.
I wake often to the knowledge that my best efforts to be this new version of me were forced even as they were eventually embraced. After the embrace has come the gratitude even for the experiences that pushed me to the difficult places I never wanted to go to. But a part of me misses the guy that could have shivering lips and anxiety, that felt so deeply that it became as physical as it was emotional. He wasn't healthy but he was human and these days I feel like my humanity has been replaced by something else.
Today, I suppose, would be as good as any to cry. But right now it would seem I have forgotten how.
J