ON CRYING.
*Note: This was originally written and posted on August 14. Thank you for your patience as I migrate everything over from another—ahem—Medium.
Q: Why am I crying all the time? I’m a grown-ass man. What is wrong with me? Can you help me fix this, so I don’t look like a freak in public?
A: Whew! So much unpacking to do. And that’s before we get to the luggage sitting in the corner of your depressingly empty apartment.
Let’s clear some air, though: “Grown-ass man?” Come on. That Twinkie of a sentiment that men need to suck their tears back inside their sockets for all but the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and even then only for a select few — their, mother, children, or their boyhood heroes (much respect, Walter Payton) — is long past its expiration date. Showing that you care enough about someone or something to mourn its loss or tearfully celebrate its arrival shouldn’t be the sole privilege of women and children. It’s what makes you a human being, and the sooner we shed terms about “manliness” and what it “means”, the sooner we’re going to be better human beings. Having feelings and being able to express them is a far greater sign of strength than staring at a coffin without so much as a lip quiver could ever be.
As for you in particular: You are crying all the time (untrue, but fine — whatever) because you are turning your entire life inside-out, ya ding-dong. It’s extraordinarily painful. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. And in case you needed proof, let’s check the footage and see exactly when you’ve cried, shall we?
Monday, August 5, 10:53 AM. Your 7-year-old daughter is rolled into surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids. This is the first surgery for anyone in the family that involves them going under general anesthesia. She is your baby, the only one of the kids you’ve been around since birth, and though you know this is a minor operation that’s been around for millennia oh gosh is she quiet and looking super-small all of a sudden. And as she shrinks into the bed at the sight of the doctor you get a double-kick to the gut when you remember that the recovery time on this is about two weeks, which means you’re only going to be around for less than half of your daughter hurting and healing. You are about to leave your baby girl in pain and become completely unable to do anything to soothe her, at a time when it feels like she might need you the most. So yes, of course you’re going to cry there.
And when she emerges from the 20-minute procedure weary but okay, sitting up and moving well even though she’s drugged to the gills and finding it hard to swallow? You’re going to cry there, too, from sheer relief (and raw guilt).
Friday, August 9, 9:45 AM. A bunch of your coworkers gather to see you off. One keeps bursting into tears and telling you the myriad ways you’ve helped her over the years, and how much you’ll be missed. This all comes as a bit of a shock to you, as you only worked together occasionally, and never all that closely. She will not be the last person to tell you something similar. You get choked up with each hug, as this is the first time you’ve been made aware of any sort of impact there in — well, forever.
Still Friday morning. The two people who worked for you have just presented you with the Michael Scott “World’s Best Boss” mug, plus a letter that openly wonders how the place is ever going to operate without you around. Dammit, this one’s hard.
Friday night, at dinner. This is essentially the Last Supper for the family, and you mostly hold your pieces together until your 7-year-old daughter — still only speaking about 1/50th of the amount she normally would and still no eating anything more solid than really over-cooked noodles — grabs your hand and squeezes it for no real reason.
The next morning, Saturday. Saying goodbye, naturally. Waving to your wife and youngest daughter from the wrong side of security while the three of you cry at a distance from each other feels like the worst. But it prods you again on the plane, when the turbulence hits, and you think of your wife squeezing your hand out of fear during flights, and you wish you had hers in yours at that very moment and perhaps for the next 192 straight hours.
Saturday night. You have just arrived at the apartment you and your eldest stepson are going to share for the next year. An apartment you have only seen in FaceTime videos and a real estate app. Upon entering, you are hit with a) the smell of mildew, b) a facefull of about a dozen reusable shopping bags, all loaded with cheap straw boater hats and being carried by a man with a once-lit-now-mostly-extinguished cigar in his mouth, and c) the notion that the gulf between your kid’s version of “really nice” and yours might be too wide to cross. Then follows a tidal wave of loneliness.
Saturday night. Still. You go to open the window in the kitchen just to get some air, because oh good lord we are going to suffocate if we don’t get some fresh air in here, and the entire windowpane falls out and hits you on the temple. Kind of a one-off, but it certainly counts.
Sunday morning. You look around for a mug to put coffee in, and see that the only option is a chipped mug that says “Fuck You! I’m a Prophet!” on the side. Further digging concludes that you will be eating all of your meals and drinking all of your beverages out of this Fucking Prophet mug, as you have no dishes. No other glasses. Also: No table. No chairs. No wastebasket. Your life feels like you are starting completely over. Who wouldn’t cry at that?
Late Sunday night. Going to put groceries away, you notice the salt grinder is stuck to the inside of the cabinet. A wipe of the finger reveals a 1/2-inch layer of cooking grease. You spend the next four hours — from 9:30 to 1:30 AM, on the night before your first day at the new job that brought you all the way across the country — cleaning years’ worth of grease off of every surface in the main living area, then steam-mopping the past three tenants’ dirt off your floors. You will deal with the clog in the shower some other time, because it’s just all too much to bear.
Very early Monday morning. Finally turning out the light to sleep. Four hours until you need to get up. The light is centered on your current nightstand — a 48-roll-count box of toilet paper.
And finally: Monday morning, on your first day at work. Not only is your wife not there to kiss you good luck, but she won’t be awake for another three hours after you leave the clean-but-only-slightly-less-depressing apartment.
Let’s face it. This is a lot. You are an emotional person who feels things on a deep, sometimes debilitating level, and this week has been the hardest, most earth-shattering one you’ve ever had. Your daughter’s surgery feels like it was a lifetime ago. It was just over a week.
All of this has built up inside you, while you’ve spent every waking hour (and those waking hours have been in greater quantity than usual) trying to do everything necessary to survive this. It’s natural to be sad, and stressed, and lonely, and feel like this is a terrible idea and wish you could close your eyes and go back and make it all disappear.
But going backward is the opposite of what you were wanting to do, correct? This is what growth feels like. You remember adolescence, right? That pain that overwhelmed your knees until you could barely stand upright? Well this is exactly like that, except in your brain. And you don’t want to go back to where you came from any more than you want to go back to being 5’4” and 112 pounds.
So cry. For shit’s sake, let it out. Feel sorry for yourself, miss your family, want a better situation. Then when the tears stop you can take a few deep breaths, wipe your eyes, and — with the first clear view you’ve had in weeks — take the inaugural and incredibly tiny step forward towards whatever is going to make this a little bit better.
Because if you really think about it, that’s all tears are—the body’s window wiper fluid, blinking away all the emotional gunk to finally let you see where you need to go.
You know what I also think? That I’ve probably just had too much gin tonight. I’m gonna go lie down for a bit. Here’s a box of tissues. Go talk to someone sober who cares.
Next time: How much booze is too much booze?
Ask a Stray Dad 