AN UGLY CRY…

Crying. Now there is something that I am really good at. It comes naturally to me. Uncontrollably, unfortunately. It is part of my Judyness. Curly hair and crying spells – that’s me. You know the kind I’m talking about. The ones that come on like a tsunami out of nowhere and scare me almost as much as they annoy anyone within a dog’s frequency range of hearing. I’m that little girl over there sobbing with shoulders heaving up and down and hiccups contorting a very small boney frame. Sad or pathetic or as already mentioned getting on everyone’s last nerve. It’s what I like least about myself. What I would change if given an ounce of magic.

By grade school I lived in terror of one of my ’attacks’. Young nuns forced into wool habits (no pun intended) and wool everything (polyester not on the market yet) got mighty short tempered on a boiling hot Texas afternoon. Even the youngest and prettiest of the convent, Mother Dorethea could not keep it together when faced with one of my meltdowns. Across the hall was Mother Virgilius, teaching the OTHER 3rd grade class. She was older and more experienced. Maybe she could take charge for the novice trying to control my flood of tears. Nope. Even the two of them were at a loss. They can’t make it stop!? What to do? Let it run it’s course. Eventually, exhaustion wins out. It’s over. What precipitated it? A harsh word, maybe just a look? We’ll never know. It doesn’t take much (oh, and by the way, I’m also the ’sensitive’ child in the family. Maybe that’s one and the same as crybaby.)

I wonder if my siblings remember my crying jags? Did they notice? Did they care? Did they have their own kid stuff to contend with? My apologies here and now to each of them and to anyone else who has ever had to endure one of my episodes (including my own children…).

Crying is crummy. Is it as bad as super super embarrassment? In a different way it is. Men aren’t even allowed to cry because it is so crummy and all about weakness. I can remember my brother doing some heavy duty crying when he was young. I really felt for him. It came from deep inside. I felt his hurt and pain and I couldn’t do anything to help him. He could get quite a range of guttural and primal symphonies going that could break your heart.

The worst thing for cryers is the suddenness with which you are taken hostage by the sobbing, wet, throbbing, body racking, hot flashes and wailing THING that enters and will depart and free you only when good and ready. Some days life is a ticking time bomb, other times it’s like walking through a mine field not knowing which step will blow you up.

The thing is, unlike my brother the crying ghost tiptoed right behind me right into my ’adulthood’. In my early twenties I was having the strangest kind of meltdown. To almost everyone around me it was invisible. I was a bit invisible too (long story for another time). My tear ducts during this time were doing a better job than the Hoover dam holding in the unholdable. I never shed a tear. Weird. Except for two times. I can laugh about them now.

Apparently floundering in life I was sent to a friend of the family for ’career counseling’. Without putting any words on it it was communicated to me that maybe I just needed a vocation….(not vAcation). Anyway, after I sat down our very kind friend began as any counselor would by asking, ”How are you doing, Judy?”. His words broke the dam. Tears flowed for a full 45 minutes. Neither of us said a word. I left. We never spoke of it. Like it never happened. I never went back. I’m telling you, this crying stuff gets in the way of life sometimes.

Second story is just like the first. Since the family friend had not found the color of my parachute I was eventually sent to an uncle’s business to be of help in some vague capacity. On the first day I found myself in the bathroom weeping softly without any ability to stop and, again, simply had to be sent home.

I’ve tried to forget those two fun days but they are such great testimony to my signature crying jags and I feel I must pay homage to the sometimes sweet and loving comfort they have also sometimes given me.

Twenty years ago I was part of a group of people that were trying to learn about themselves and become happier. We had to go deep. We had to look at ourselves honestly and go where we had never gone before. On several of those weekend retreats someone would eventually dissolve into THE UGLY CRY… I’ve blocked out the memory of mine but I’m sure I had my turn. Very often they happened in the privacy of someone’s hotel room accompanied by 4 or 5 other spiritual seekers. Other times they were in public, like the lobby where passerby could watch the show. THE UGLY CRY intrigues me. It’s the full blown, mother of all mothers of the crying world. It is ’ugly’. You look ugly and you feel ugly. Your insides are on the outside. Only the most special kind of folk can witness the ugly cry…

And yet, I wonder if the ugly cry doesn’t have its special powers. One dose and you are inoculated. It can be not exactly life changing but more like a life movement. Just as some women who have never had a full expression of their highest sexual moment could it be that there are men and women who have never had the earth moved during an ugly cry?

I am what would be considered almost old now. The tears have come and gone over the years but have been mostly manageable. It could be that aging comes with passages and so the last few years have been accompanied by new buckets of tears. They flow freely now. They have become my friends. Crying is part of my language. It is how I express myself along with my words and laughter. Embracing is the new revolution. They are mine.