I Am Not Crying... It's Just Been Raining on My Face

"I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do." 

That's from the Terminator.  I have a friend that cannot stand when people cry.  She has to leave the room.  This is tough for me cause I am a big crier.  Is crier even a word?  She got me to thinking about this; about the fact that maybe, just maybe, crying all the time makes other people uncomfortable.

But what do you do if you don't cry?  I cry at everything. Always have.  When I was a little girl I loved biographies.  I read the biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. And I BALLED when she died.  I went downstairs and woke up my mom and had to tell her the whole story through tears.  She was less than pleased.  She thought my out-pouring of emotion was a bit dramatic since I knew when I started the book that Mary Todd Lincoln was dead.  But I cried, none the less.  Buckets and buckets of tears.

When I was a kid and I got in trouble my dad would say he was going to spank us again if we didn't stop crying.  I could never stop crying ... those hiccups, and shaky crying... and I typically got spanked again and that just made the crying even worse.  It was a vicious cycle. 

If you tell me something and you start crying, rest assured I will cry with you.  Probably harder than you are crying and it will become about me.  I cry in Hallmark commercials, I cry at songs, I cry at weddings, I cry at funerals, I cry at the news, I cry when I stub my toes, I cry when I am tired, I cry anytime I have to do math, I cry when people don't like cheese, I cry in books, I cry the morning after bootcamp, I cry at Christmas carols, I cry when I talk about home, I cry when I am sick, I cry when you are sick, I cry when babies are born....

The problem with my crying is that it starts with something small.... and then next thing you know I am crying because I'll be 40 someday, or that my house is a mess, or that my hair is too short, or that my ovaries are aging... I will rattle off any and everything that could possibly ever be or go wrong in my life.  It's a little ridiculous and can be hard to follow my logic.  But I always feel so much better afterwards.

I just cannot imagine not being able to cry at everything.  Its like one of my favorite past times.  I mean I've had to switch to waterproof mascara just to camoflage my outbursts.

But my friend can't cry unless she's laughing (which is awesome and so much fun to make her cry laughing) but I am not sure how she is going to react when I have my first outburst - which could happen anytime.  And I just don't understand how she gets through the day without tears. 

So, be careful how you respond to my blog today, you might make me cry.