"You need not be ashamed of your tears" - Charles Dickens
September 1st 2013; 10:08pm
Mr. Dickens was a wise man and had a way with words, that quote being just one of many he had to offer, but frankly I wouldn't know. I, on the other hand, never seem to know what to say. It just so happens that the quote above confused me deeply.
Is it that we should not hide ourselves when we cry?
Or that we should not be afraid to cry in the open, in front of a lot of people? The question I ask myself is why we should not be ashamed of our tears; in my opinion, crying symbolizes weakness and vulnerability, but if there is anything I've learned after all that happened in the past year is that weakness only gives way for hurt and pain.
That is why it is important to keep up a wall that would stop any emotion from reaching the heart, only for its strings to be toyed with. Everyone has felt some sort of emotion, both good and bad, but when the bad starts to outweigh the good, the wall starts to build slowly until it's too far gone, such that any normal person would forget why they started building it in the first place.
Now that's where I come in.
I'm not normal, never have been, probably never will be which is why even when my wall is built too high, I keep going because I've experienced way too many of the wrong kind of emotions and no matter what anyone says, you learn that it's easier not to let anyone in.
I learned that the hard way.
See, when I say I'm not normal, I mean it in every sense of the word. It's the weirdest thing but as unbelievable as it is, I've never shed a single tear.
Truthfully, I don't cry. I've never cried.
I've always wondered if there's something wrong with me.
Is it that I had been born emotionally wrecked or just abnormal and without tear ducts? My parents never thought it important and said I should count myself lucky, at which I just stared blankly at them and told them I needed to see a doctor.
How in the world do I count myself lucky when I couldn't even cry at my grandmother's funeral?
All I could do was stare at the pedestal, willing desperately to feel something … anything. An emotion so strong that it would somehow automatically trigger my tear ducts which were probably inactive.
Of course, my father put off the doctor's appointment for the longest time until I eventually gave up on him and accepted my fate. If he said not being able to cry was a blessing then I would treat it as such, and that's exactly what I did.
I didn't cry when the cat we'd had since forever was run over by a car in the street. I didn't cry when my father lost his job at the firm and had to move away for a while to "get back on his feet".
I didn't even cry when my parents announced that they were getting a divorce after my dad had been in an affair with a wealthier woman.
I could tell that both my parents were frustrated with me but I couldn't care less. Mom took on two jobs plus the one she already had and became an alcoholic and a trashy slut. Dad moved all his stuff out of the house and married the wealthier woman. My sister…
Well, all that was left was my sister and I. I thought that maybe we could live through everything together and it would all be okay.
After all, we would always have each other.