Feelings

I used to not really cry. I would cry out of frustration and I would cry when I would think of/try to remember my mom (who died when I was 5), but I didn't really cry out of sadness about anything that was happening in my life at that moment. I'm a little bit of an emotional robot and I was much worse back in the day. Then when I was 24 or 25, I moved to a new city where I knew no one, started grad school (which was waaaaaaaay harder than undergrad and which I hated), my boyfriend broke up with me, and my dog that I'd had since I was 8 died. This seriously all happened in about a month and the dog and boyfriend things happened on the same day.

Twenty-four or 25 years worth of closed floodgates burst open and I cried more than I'd ever had in my life. Still the most crying in a concentrated period of time I've ever done.

But now I cry all the time. I'm not a person prone to depression, so I mostly cry to stuff that just makes me feel a lot. I cry about sad stuff and I cry about happy stuff, but I think what I cry most about is people connecting with one another, people really understanding what someone needs and doing their best to provide that for them, even if whatever they're doing is relatively minor. Empathy, I guess. Especially empathy among the little guys, people that may not have a lot of power in other aspects of their lives, but do the little bit that they can because they're humans and they recognize that you have to be good to people.

I've recently read two things that made me cry a lot for the above-listed reasons. My face is still wet, nose still runny, and eyes still puffy from this one. I have no idea who this guy is—a friend just posted the link on Facebook. I guess he's a comedian or improv guy. And, like I mentioned above, I don't personally know what real, clinical depression feels like, but I've been very close to people that do and it's very clear that the author knows it well. He sounds like a busy guy and I would guess that delving back into his own depression isn't the most pleasant of tasks, but he dropped everything he was doing to help to the very best of his ability a total, anonymous stranger. Someone he may never hear from again. I can't really articulate how good that is.

This is the other tearjerker. The story about the street kids...  And it's just a great post overall. I think she sums it up nicely, "It really is those small acts of thoughtfulness and kindess that can turn your average day into a great day, restores ones faith in humanity or in extreme cases, stop someone from ending it all."

I'm a little burned out from studying all day to expound on that more, but I trust that you are all readers with brains in your head that are capable of coming up with your own conclusions.

I was going to close with a commercial I kept seeing during the Olympics that made me cry every time. I couldn't find it (don't remember what it was for), but found this one, which also made me bawl.