my cup overfloweth with my tears
life is hard, ok? all i want to do is crawl into a hole and never come out, but here i am! shouting into the abyss!
I don’t have to tell you that life is unbearable. Collectively, we’re going through it: genocide (on a mass level,) political theatrics, climate change, the fact that a decade on, a community still doesn’t have access to clean water, etc. Personally? It’s a rough go for me too, though I try not to complain about it anymore.
I do that in individual therapy.
And in couples’ therapy.
And to my best friends, in our group chats, in hysterics. Often at 2:30 AM, when ennui finds me as their unwitting companion. Mostly, I’m sick of hearing myself bitch and moan. Everyone is dealing with their shit.
I just fight for my right to be fucking loud about it.
Last summer, I mapped out the places one could have public sex in New York City on a private Google Maps list. Complete with commentary. One of my favourite entries touts, “If you can make it on an evening with a DJ set, and go down to the bottom floor at an opportune time— no one can hear you or even suspect a thing.” It was the lasting result of a situation that faded because neither of us could host.
This summer, I think I’ll chart the places I’ve cried in public. I used to tell my friends I never shed tears— especially not in front of anyone. Except for the last year, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve cried (and again, not in public.) Lately, I find myself sobbing all over the city. I’ve deemed the corner across the street, the sidewalk lined with hand-built wooden planters teeming with buds of purple and violet, the lilacs sprouting towards the skies, as my crying corner. I sob in the darkness of my sensory deprivation float tank for hours. I collapse and wail in my spouse’s arms when I come home.
If it were up to me, I wouldn’t cry at all.
But it has to be let out.
Sometimes it feels like I’m releasing generations’ worth of trauma while tears spill. The science of tears states that different ways of crying determine the chemical structure and makeup— for instance, emotional tears have components that differ from basal tears. But I wonder if tears hold the traumas my ancestors felt.
Heather Christle wrote an entire book about crying, in the same vein as Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. I picked it up during its first publication and finished it a couple of years ago on a trip upstate, where I had nothing but time and leisure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to read a book about depression around the time a global pandemic was about to hit, or because the subject material proved challenging for me… but I’m glad I finished it.
“They say perhaps we cry when language fails, when words can no longer adequately convey our hurt. When my crying is not wordless enough I beat my head with my fists.” - Heather Christle, The Crying Book
When I devoured it in one sitting in a tiny cabin in the woods, I started examining my relationship with crying. As Christle says, maybe it’s the fact that we can’t put words to the feelings. There’s so much hurt and pain that we can no longer do anything but embody it through tear-soaked catharsis. Given the global climate, I’ve felt that recently. My senses are overwhelmed by the fact of compounded adversity. I don’t have the time, space or energy to hold for anyone else but myself. In the process of a challenging transition, one of the greatest loves of my life remarks how apparent my body stores and processes emotions. My spouse takes note and tells me how, in the decade of our love, more sensitive I am to external stimuli than when we first started. Part of this is due to aging, and the other part, rewiring my brain to combat the trauma in my bones.
Artist Rose-Lynn Fisher started an art project amidst her deep grief that documented dried tears through a microscope lens. This later turned into The Topography of Tears, where she comments that her methodology in tear preservation either resulted in air-dried tear slides or compressed underneath a slide cover. The ways that tears dry up on microscope slides: Some patterns read brutalist, while others are softer and more scattered. I wonder what fragments and spirals my tears will dry into, and if they explode onto a slide. I wonder what maps my tears will build and what treasures I will find if I embrace the extreme mood swings and go for it.
What terrain will my tears fashion? I hope into galactic fractals, akin to Van Gogh’s evocative swirling and looping evening skies, projecting my fears amongst the stars. Perhaps Fisher could lend me her expertise in preserving my emotions through the intersection of science and art. Her art was a singular process, maybe mine could be too.
As I move through stages of grief on all levels, I still think I prefer crying alone. But I know that my wails aren’t isolated. Grief is borne from love, the depths of which can be unknowable to others. There’s a reason why babies cry: there’s no other way to communicate your basic needs if you haven’t developed the language. The loveliest thing about a collective cry is that you know that you’re all grieving out of love, together.
Even more so than sadness, they are cries of love. They are cries of the pains that occur because of love. They are cries of anger and frustration from when the love is not enough to cure the world of its evils. We are socialised to believe crying is bad (and wouldn’t you know it? It relates to sexism because research shows that crying has negative female associations through gender roles and stereotypes) but it’s a natural, base response. Why do we hide it? Why are we so quick to mask our tears from others? Or, when those socialised as female do let out their tears, why are we seen as hysterical or crazy? Why are our tears and screams less potent and important than those of the cishet patriarchy?
I’m forever grateful for those who sit beside me to wipe my tears and hold me when I sob into their chests. I’m even more thankful for the ones who validate my feelings, encourage me to let the emotions out and cry my tears of rage into the wee hours of the evening. And I’m appreciative of those who join along, pooling our collective tears together so that action can be done once we regain our energy.
A gentle reminder:
I will be presenting a workshop at the inaugural MidWest Love Fest in Indianapolis, IN this August 2024. Tickets and registration are linked below, please use my code ‘CHRISTALEI’ for 10% off! I can’t wait for you to join me for my presentation on the Cosmos of Care!
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"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." - Isak Dinesan (likely a Cancer something or other). LOVE YOU <3
Sending all the hugs to you - I cry often and find it cathartic to do so. 💜