When was the last time you cried?

That question seems to caught up in so much baggage. As though you must of been either; weak, scared or self-pitying. Perhaps you were happy, excited or surprised, you just needed to be overcome with some emotion. I’m championing crying at the moment.

So many of my tears have been shed in airports, there’s something so powerful about the energy at an airport. People relieved to be back, heartbroken to be leaving or physically embodying the emotional baggage they know they’re know travelling back with. Airports are filled with joy, sadness and excitement.

My picture is a really free great moment I had, lying on a walkway for hours with a great woman I met by chance in San Francisco, then reconnected with in New York. It’s a reminder that despite the tears I’ve been blessed to have FAR more happy moments in this life.

Not many people have seen me cry. I think (more than I want) have probably seen me shed alcohol through my eyes back in my hay day. But few have seen me be overcome with emotion in a real, vulnerable or raw kind of way. It’s not that I’m a reclusive cryer. I rarely cry on my own. When I’m alone it’s like I am so hard on myself the drill sergeant inside me tells me to get ahold of myself (and drop and give me twenty). All the pain someone dissipates or is displaced to some other place which is sad.

I find that fact fascinating.

When I cry do I like a child need someone to witness it to validate my pain? Or am I so much more at ease with myself so when I’m alone I can deal with whatever I’m feeling?

I honestly don’t know. If I don’t know it’s unlikely that anyone else will know the little discrepancies which make up me. What I do know is that at some key moments in my life which were sad, exciting or shocking I only cried in the presence of someone else.

I cried seemingly constantly the day I was leaving what I felt to be my new home, even whilst eating Indian food before getting on a plane, but the second I was through the airport doors my well dried-up. When I got back home, I felt lost and confused I had to go upstairs get in bed, then come back downstairs walk into the room sit next to my Mum and then let the well fill up again.

I found myself crying in a hostel room with 11 other people asleep around me at 5am, I cried whilst at Bangkok Airport surrounded by strangers and I cried whilst on the plane also surrounded by unknowns. These were only ‘alone crying events’ by the fact I didn’t know anyone. I was not in fact alone. Maybe my hypotheses still stands.

There have been long periods of times where I never cried, also times where I cried for on reflection no good reason, where I cried while driving, while leaving, while coming back and going somewhere new.

Just the other day I cried A LOT, it was a river that seemed to be leading to nowhere, with so many river inhabitants being washed up to shore along the way. At the end I felt less like a beached whale than a deflated beached whale. I’d let out a lot of hot air, a list of things which were worrying me stored up inside. That is powerful.

In Yoga, we believe our body holds our emotions. Sometimes you have to sit in a pose for such a long time to feel the discomfort and realise that the pain is actually emotional pain manifesting as the physical.

You also sometimes need to just irrationally, irreversibly and uncontrollably cry, cry without reason or regret, cry until you laugh.

When was the last time you cried? Do you ever wonder about the tendencies of your tears or lack-of?

 

Namaste,

 

Helen – WAP