Life is hard when you are a cryer. You have to bring extra Kleenex to movies. You have to be extra vigilant at weddings, graduations, and funerals that you don't look like Joan Jett in the rain. You have to contemplate whether to wear mascara. You have to endure condescending terms for your tendency to cry: "She's emotional." "She really feels things." "She's that way." You have to constantly explain to people you really aren't that upset; you just cry a lot.
I've cried at things that some people would consider appropriate, and some things that wouldn't typically elicit that kind of emotion:
- Weddings--no brainer. My own: I berated myself for thinking I could get through a page-long speech without losing it.
- People dying in films. This is common. But I'll cry for anyone who dies in a movie; they don't even have to be good guys. Characters don't even have to die; they can just get sick, or have a bad day.
- National Conventions--Get the spouse and the family to join you onstage and I go from misty to overflowing.
- Olympics--You don't even have to win anything. You just have to show up and run your event/hit your double backflip/score a point at ping pong and you got me.
- Feel good reality shows. Extreme Makeover, the unveilings on TLC's What Not to Wear.
- Cheesy endings of redemption movies. I saw the end of Cool Runnings the other day. I thought it sucked. I cried. I know that the writing is formulaic and the plot simplistic. And I snort and even verbally condemn movies like these, but I still cry.
- Feel good stories. I cried when I saw how a woman funded kids' education with her life savings, how mothers saved up breast milk for needy children abroad, when an African woman emigrated and made a new life in America, when a woman won a Weber Grill on Oprah. All crying material.
I do believe it's genetic. Not to blame it on people or anything. I recall my Dad, despite the hard exterior, breaking down while watching John Wayne movies, hearing the "Little Drummer Boy" on the radio, or watching RiverDance. Swear to God. My mother taught me the triggers. It doesn't matter what people say at these events, but any wedding, graduation, speech with words "I just want to thank" tweaks the tear ducts.
I was surprised this weekend when I was watching the TV series "Heroes" with H-band. I made a movement with my hand that he misinterpreted as me wiping away a tear.
"I know, Babe. This show gets me emotional, too." I looked over and saw that H-band was getting misty.
I felt conflicted. I wanted to correct him and say, "Actually, I'm not crying," but I didn't want to discourage him. Maybe now someone else could cry with me, and I wouldn't have to be the only puffy face coming out of the movie theater. We could both be puffy. We could cry together in solidarity.
"Actually, Honey, I wasn't crying. That's great that you can cry though."
H-band felt bruised: "Why are you lying! Whatever ... you were crying."
I sat there, disappointed with how that turned out , thinking, "Heroes? Sheesh!"