As a western male, I was taught crying is a sign of weakness. That's bullshit. I cried a lot when my wife became sick, and again when she went into care.
Crying helped me cope. It let my emotions out. It's healthy.
@RickiTarr I never cried that much until after I had kids. Not because I had them...but because having them made me more sensitive to things. Can't watch Little House on the Prairie without crying. Plus getting old makes you cry more...I don't know why...
I cry all the time
When I write
When I listen to music
When I watch something on TV
When I see sad news
When I read something sad
When my children hurt themselves and cry
So at the moment when I see the list like this...I wonder when I actually don't cry
@RickiTarr I don't cry super often, but I do when I need it.
I see many talking about crying for good/happy things. I just don't get that. Some of it is I'm not great at showing positive emotions (not that I'm excellent at bad ones, but I'm worse at positive) but I don't understand crying from happiness.
@RickiTarr
At work and in politics, "never let them see you cry," was the rule.
I have a good friend who had been a city council member before me. Sometimes she'd watch the meeting on the community tv channel, and if it was a tough one, she'd show up in the lobby and say, "come on, let's get a drink," then take me to a dive bar.
Random weird dive bars - and it inevitably turned into a party.
@RickiTarr I mostly lost the ability after i delivered my father’s Eulogy. While he was not Cherokee he certainly acted like a man from a Cherokee society.
Only regained the ability to weep when my transition began last June.
Never much of a sobber except when lovers bushwhacked me with a break up. And I doubt i would ever again sob in front of any Wasi'chu I was banging these days.
What do i weep about now? tragic things and impossibly joyous things
@RickiTarr I've always cried far more readily than I'd like. When I'm happy. When I'm sad. When I'm angry. When I'm moved. When I'm talking about something that means a lot to me. When I see other people break down in sorrow or deep nostalgia. When I watch a movie from my childhood w/ my kid. When an ad on TV tells a heartstring-yanking story. When animals are super cute.
It's very frustrating sometimes not to be able to express any genuine thing of my soul without it coming out in waterworks!
@RickiTarr
I used to cry very easily when I was much younger. The past few years I have a condition called dry eye. I can be sad about stuff & not be able to cry because of this condition. Using my lubricant eye drops help a little.
@Callalily@RickiTarr I will occasionally shed a tear or two over something sentimental I see or hear online, but I never cry over my own sorrows, because that would be to admit they exist.
@squig@Callalily@RickiTarr forgot to mention my own weeping somewhere in this thread of many threads i also do not cry over my many sorrows, but those of others.
My best weep fest comes watching episodes of Little Bird. Look it up and watch and know that Canada is not “The Nice Guy Nation”
@RickiTarr
Crying is a natural reaction, as much as laughter and anger, both of which are perfectly "acceptable". Yell and flash someone the bird in rage? Cool! But tears? Hell no. We're encouraged to swallow tears and 'buck up'. I never understood that.
@RickiTarr For years, my husband was saying that I probably don’t wash out hair conditioner properly because my wet hair made my pillow stained. Only when I moved to another country, I realized the stains were not from hair. They were from tears.
@RickiTarr
I cry when I'm laughing really hard.
Like when I'm in bed and cut a bad fart, and my wife gets annoyed. Or watching videos of people slipping on ice.
(yes, there is something really wrong with me)
@RickiTarr With close people I hide crying because of two reasons: 1) I don’t want to upset them(they can’t help) and 2) I don’t want to explain why I am crying. And thw second one may aso be for two reasons: 1) I don’t have either energy or mental capacity for that right now or 2) it’s because of them and I don’t want to tell them that because either I don’t want to upset them or I can’t deal with it right now
@RickiTarr with my nd emotional disregulation, I can get very emotional over tiniest things, but I always try to hide it. Not just because of how someone will perceive that, but what they’ll do based on that perception. People may want to distance because they don’t want drama, people may try to use that as a lever later, people may start thinking of me worse because they think these tears are a start of some manipulation
@RickiTarr
I probably have the opposite problem. I cry really easily. Both happy and sad. I can't watch movies or read about children or animals either getting hurt or getting a great outcome I am likely in tears. It used to annoy my ex but who cares.
@RickiTarr IDK where it goes from, but my parents raised me with a notion that public crying is not appropriate, something shameful - like public nakedness (which I also never could understand, but that’s a different story). Basically, public crying is never allowed for proper people, aside of maybe funerals, and even there actual genuine sincere crying wasn’t welcomed, instead that fake ritual crying at specific moments and places should have taken place
I try and keep all my emotions under a reasonable amount of control, because I can get very angry very easily if I let myself. There is a cost to that on the upside, but it's the best way for me to navigate society.
This makes it hard for me to reach the emotional overload that leads to tears, even when I want to get there. It's frustrating.
@RickiTarr I'm trying to get over that myself. I cried at the drop of a hat as a young boy, but in the era I grew up in that was a surefire way to get your ass kicked early and often, so I learned to repress it with the best of them. Now as a middle aged man, I'm trying to learn to let myself cry but goddamn it's hard!
@RickiTarr I've become more of a crier and less self conscious about it since my 20s.
Losing my Mother, that was it. I wasn't going to apologize for crying about losing my mother, and nobody was going to shame me for it. Nobody tried, and I had many a meltdown in public, alone, in the first 6 months or so after she passed.
I don't think people notice someone crying in public unless they're keening and gnashing their teeth. Everyone left me alone. Which actually made it easy to recover once the wave of grief passed.
@RickiTarr gosh, what an odd thread. I cry all the time. I cried when each of my daughters was born, the first falcon landing, during loads of Star Trek tng and tos episodes.
I cried when my grandma told me her story during tge apollo moon landings that I added to Apollo stories online.
I cry over a shared delicious meal! Over an mRNA vaccine defeating COVID. Delicious pie.
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