Cry baby

Dear Blog diary,

I remember Muse Machine back in high school. I loved to dance and theater kids are cool, so I joined. You’d think there’d be oodles of chances to get girls too because all the dudes are gay, but damn it Danielle Heaton didn’t like me. She did at first. Went on a date. I never called her. Explains why she didn’t like me. Young and stupid but we’re getting off topic.

The director was Nat Horne. This one scene he was trying to get us to express sadness through movement. And he said “you’re so young. You don’t know how to cry yet.”

That didn’t resonate with me at the time. It does now.

I love me a good tear jerker. Forrest Gump, Rudy, and Cool Runnings get me every time. Yes, Cool Runnings when the father opens up his jacket to show his Junior that he’s proud of him. Fucking waterworks. My father loves action movies. Michael fuckin Bay. Guns cars explosions with some witty dialogue in between. I love my father immensely, but I do acknowledge that he is a fairly blunt instrument and has the emotional maturity of a 6 year old. In most ways at least.

Still, when it comes to film, he doesn’t like dramas. Too many emotions. Nowadays we call them triggers. Scenes in film that remind him of pain he forgot, or pain he’s trying to forget.

That didn’t resonate with me at the time. It does now.

I see so many people places and things that bring me back to deeply rooted pain. Not like Danielle Heaton pain. Real pain.

More, overarching categories. Not being good enough. Feeling alienated. Being rejected. Sometimes completely unprovoked, I just miss my grandma.

I don’t think Nat meant crying as a form of expressing suffering. More I think he meant it as a source of life. You keep living, you see the peaks and troughs of how far you’ve come.

It’s not physical pain or even break ups anymore. Now it’s the accumulated experience of life, good or bad. If not for nothing, it’s the emotional fortitude to still be vulnerable to feel after years of pains.

So yes, now I know how to cry.

Cheers,

E