On Becoming a Crier
- SJ Williamson
- Feb 22
- 5 min read
I don't know if it's the inner misogynist in me or if I just had difficulties with emotions when I was younger, but I wasn't much of a crier growing up. I had seen many a movie, played many games, and listened to many songs. The only media I remember crying during was Toy Story 3, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, and Hachi. Even then, my cries were like a single manly tear, barely shed and shed in silence. I felt tough.
Fast-forward 15 years and now I feel like an emotional wreck. Once one tear is shed, the floodgates open, releasing a tsunami of salty water on my face. My eyes burn, and I cannot wipe away my tears fast enough to keep a dry face. I keep hankies and napkins in my bags and purses, not knowing what will set me off next. For this blog post, I want to explore situations and emotions that bring up tears for me, how I went from stoic to crier.
Pain
As an adult, I have come to experience pain I didn't know as a child. My car accident in 2014 led to months of physical pain and recovery as well as PTSD that changed how my brain and body functioned. Changing the dressing on my arm was so painful I didn't cry as much as I screamed. My Tía Kim was able to introduce me to non-stick gauze, a life-saver for me when I experienced pain from bloody wounds. After the accident, I thought I could manage all sorts of new physical pain. I sat for long, painful tattoos only to eventually need numbing cream as I entered my 30s and tattooed more painful spots on my body. I relied on yoga positions to help deal with period cramps only to get a hysterectomy when I was 30 to remove painful cysts and end my periods altogether. I developed IBS and Colitis during the early Covid-19 Pandemic, leading to multiple surgeries, treatments, medications, and dietary changes only to provide partial relief from pain, blood loss, and a life in which I needed to be close to a bathroom at all times. I'd eventually develop severe back pain as well.
My pain from the accident proved not that I could face all pain, but that I would live a life of pain which I learned to deal with, however I learned to manage. My life of pain has led to many tears towards the end of my 20s, some in private and some in public. I tapped out of some tattoos because the pain was so intense I shed a silent tear or two. Period pain was so intense I could barely exist without crying before I had my hysterectomy. I cried for a whole night on the toilet before going to the ER for my Colitis one time, fearful that I couldn't pay the fees. Most recently, I had a breakdown in the Salt Lake City Airport because my back pain was so intense I couldn't carry my bad under ten pounds to an adjacent terminal a 20-minute walk away. A caring employee called a wheelchair for me when they saw me sitting on the floor crying in pain. This is my new life: pain and tears that transcend the shame of being an emotional wreck in public.
Loss
Loss like the kind I have experienced in adulthood wasn't in my childhood. First, I lost my grandpa to cancer in 2017, then my grandma in 2021, then my friend Jade in 2024. I also lost many childhood pets: Maggie, Squirt, Rex, Jack, Jaeger, Hank, and many strays I cared for including my beloved Mangee. Permanent losses like these affected me more than I thought possible. I was always aware of death, of the afterlife, of the unavoidable. Still, each loss brought with it a handful or two of tears. I'm not sure if the tears are shed for those I have lost or for the loss I feel in their absence. Are my tears ones of selfishness or empathy? I don't know. Perhaps both. I feel a twinge of pain on their birthdays, holidays, and in situations where we would be together. Sometimes tears accompany that pain. I don't know if it gets easier as the years pass or not. It hasn't quite yet at least.
Love
Like the other causes of tears, love has been quite the unexpected. I have attended two weddings of dear friends of over 15 years in the last couple of years. Each one had an open bar and opened floodgates. Can I blame my tears on alcohol or am I truly a sap for love? I don't know. I thought I understood love with my first boyfriend; I didn't. Now that I'm with someone who truly cares for me, he doesn't believe in marriage and forever monogamous relationships. So do I know romantic love? Maybe, maybe not. But I know at these weddings I see the friends I've grown up with radiant in beauty and grace, with a partner who loves them and whom they love, and know they deserve nothing less than the love they want and have in their committed partners. I see what it is like to have a dedicated lover and the joy and happiness that comes with that privilege. And it touches me somewhere in my soul to know that my friends are happy, not alone even though I am far away from them now.
The Unknown
While I sobbed at my friend's wedding last week, Lea held my drunk ass close and promised that one day I would be a bride too. And though I carried on that night drinking, dancing, laughing, and celebrating Lauren and Nick, those words stuck with me. Like the tears I shed for loss, I wondered if my tears at the wedding were tears of empathy or selfishness. Were they shed because of joy for Lauren and Nick or because they found something special I have yet to experience? Do I feel a love I already know or do I feel a fear of what I have not, and might not, ever known? Do my tears betray me when they are seen by other people? Do people see my tears as empathy or selfishness? Should I hide away in a bathroom stall when I feel the tears coming? Should I blame them on the alcohol, on the ambience, on the music? I don't know.
All I know is they come forth and I am powerless to stop them now. Whatever kept me from crying in childhood and teenage life is no longer within me. I am a crier. We don't talk about it often. I don't often investigate why I feel the way I feel in times of unrivaled loss of self-control. What happens, happens. And I am helpless regardless of why I shed these tears. Are you too?
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