Fresh Saltwater

My eyes well up with tears a lot, but I rarely find myself crying.

I used to cry a lot when I was very young, but now sadness is mainly words in my head.  Dry hollow feeling in my chest as I walk around.  Sudden unexplained fatigue.  Usually doesn’t last all that long, though.  I’ve gotten better at giving myself comfort or distraction that engages either my body or my mind.  Maybe I’ve gotten used to the sorrow and insecurity and can just relegate it to the background of my mind most of the time, freeing up space for daydream or construction.  There are some things, some recurring thoughts, some memories, some inevitabilities, that there is simply no comfort in the world for.  I’ve accepted that and, for the most part, learned to cope.  

Related to not crying, I heard Don McLean’s American Pie in a restaurant tonight, and for the first time in my life, did not feel like crying.  I remember being a very small child, maybe about three years old, and crying every time my mom played it.  Cried at least a little, at least quietly to myself for a few seconds, my fingers rubbing an itch under my eye and no one noticing, every time I heard it since.  Might not have been as affected by it today because I was in a loud place and couldn’t hear all of the lyrics.  Or maybe because I actually did find myself crying in the car a few minutes before.  Probably for under a minute, but it counts.  Release of emotion from the instant trauma I felt dealing with an encounter that began innocuously, flowed humorously, and then, with an invisible flip of a switch, turned downright nasty and horrifying for me.  I hate men who are crass with women.  I really wish society still valued manners and politeness, and that more men still felt obliged to be respectful and gentlemanly in their interactions with women.  The feeling that I am not cut out at all for this modern world from which I cannot escape absolutely shakes my foundation every time I feel it, even though I know a lot of people must feel that way.  It fills me with a panic I can do absolutely nothing to quell, except tell myself, horrible as it sounds, that I can just hide a little more, be more careful about who I’m friends with, who I even talk to casually, who I invite nonverbally into my personal space.  And that’s the only thought that comforts me:  that I can sink deeper into introversion.  I certainly can.  I’m a little bit disturbed by exactly how much that thought comforts me.